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Old 17th August 2015, 04:52 PM   #401
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Originally Posted by Daylightstar View Post
On what basis would you then believe there is an afterlife?
I have seen a few things that defy explanation based on what we know or accept as reality. I even started a thread about it here on the forum. Most of them were debunked, a couple of the explanations for the phenomena didn't fit.

Albeit, I know that what we perceive isn't what is always actually there, but in either case, there should have been a logical explanation to fit what I saw. To me, that is evidence that there is much more to reality than we can perceive even with technology.

If that's the case, then you can't rule out the existence of an after life just because we don't have the ability to perceive it. If, or when, we ever have a way to observe this afterlife, I don't think it's going to be anything like the visions people have when they are dying.

If I had to guess, "here" isn't the whole sum of our existence. This life is just a type of game that our real self plays, and we are just in character here on earth. That would mean that our corporeal bodies work more like a transmitter to broadcast a shadow of what we really are. I'ld like for that idea to be true but I have no idea if that's how it really works.
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Old 17th August 2015, 07:31 PM   #402
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Originally Posted by Jodie View Post
I don't see how the research for near death experiences can indicate that an after life doesn't exist. If our perceptions are limited, then what people claim to be seeing would simply be a brain function. How would that be evidence that an after life didn't exist? If there is other evidence than these particular studies, I'm not aware of it.
What is evidence that an "after life" does not exist is the utter lack of the slightest indication of any exitence of a "soul". The "self", the "mind", is a function of the brain, and has never been demonstrated to exist independent of a functioning brain.

There's no "there" there--It's Cleveland all the way down.

(Feel free to provide actual evidence to the contrary.)
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Old 17th August 2015, 07:34 PM   #403
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Originally Posted by Jodie View Post
Neither do I, but I don't think we stop being when we die.
And you are, of course, welcome to "think" this. Without any evidence, there is no reason for you to expect anyone else to "think" this with you, or for you to claim that your "thinking" reflects any demonstrable facet of reality.
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Old 17th August 2015, 11:13 PM   #404
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Originally Posted by Jodie View Post
If the math behind the science is imperfect then the conclusion based on the data can't be definite.
Nothing in science is definite, so of course there is a remote possibility that there is an afterlife, just like there is a remote possibility that the world was created last Thursday. Given the evidence that exists, these possibilities are so remote, however, that we would normally call them impossible.
If you want to believe in something that is plainly impossible given the evidence, you are free to do so, but it is not a failure of science that you are left without evidence for your fantasy.
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Old 17th August 2015, 11:56 PM   #405
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Originally Posted by Jodie View Post
I have seen a few things that defy explanation based on what we know or accept as reality. I even started a thread about it here on the forum. Most of them were debunked, a couple of the explanations for the phenomena didn't fit.

"I've seen something I didn't understand" is not evidence for an afterlife, even if others can't explain it.

Quote:
If that's the case, then you can't rule out the existence of an after life just because we don't have the ability to perceive it.

And here you see trying to reverse the burden of proof again. If we "don't have the ability to perceive" something then you have no evidence that it exists. It is generally impossible to conclusively rule anything out, at least to the satisfaction of believers, who can always use special pleading or say, if a particular experiment fails to show evidence for existence, "you were looking in the wrong place"; see, for example, your recent comments about a "broken television."
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Old 18th August 2015, 12:51 AM   #406
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Originally Posted by Jodie View Post
I have seen a few things that defy explanation based on what we know or accept as reality. I even started a thread about it here on the forum. Most of them were debunked, a couple of the explanations for the phenomena didn't fit.
...
This thread apparently.
Which phenomenon you posted in that thread did not get a fitting explanation, according to you?
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Old 18th August 2015, 09:25 AM   #407
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Originally Posted by Jodie View Post
I have seen a few things that defy explanation based on what we know or accept as reality. I even started a thread about it here on the forum. Most of them were debunked, a couple of the explanations for the phenomena didn't fit.

Albeit, I know that what we perceive isn't what is always actually there, but in either case, there should have been a logical explanation to fit what I saw. To me, that is evidence that there is much more to reality than we can perceive even with technology.

If that's the case, then you can't rule out the existence of an after life just because we don't have the ability to perceive it. If, or when, we ever have a way to observe this afterlife, I don't think it's going to be anything like the visions people have when they are dying.

If I had to guess, "here" isn't the whole sum of our existence. This life is just a type of game that our real self plays, and we are just in character here on earth. That would mean that our corporeal bodies work more like a transmitter to broadcast a shadow of what we really are. I'ld like for that idea to be true but I have no idea if that's how it really works.
Just for the sake of argument, let's assume that you saw things that cannot be explained by scientifically accepted reality (although your thread did contain some excellent physically acceptable explanations). Why then would you assume that the most likely non-physical explanation is an afterlife? Why not demons, or winds in an ether?

My point is only that even if you believe in the existence of things that we cannot detect and so we do not accept scientifically, why must a specific unprovable thing be true? Of all of the things that might exist as a consequence? The people who claim to channel the dead are frauds or self-delusional. The religious stories are just that. There is an obvious desire of people to believe that death is not their end, or that of their loved one. But in the absence of being able to specifically prove an afterlife, even the general existence of things for which there cannot be proof is not evidence for an afterlife per se.
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Old 18th August 2015, 12:11 PM   #408
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Originally Posted by Giordano View Post
My point is only that even if you believe in the existence of things that we cannot detect and so we do not accept scientifically, why must a specific unprovable thing be true?

It's the same sort of false dilemma we keep seeing elsewhere: either the shroud is 700 years old or it is authentic, either "the scientific model" is true or we are immortal, either science can explain everything or there is an afterlife...
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Old 18th August 2015, 01:43 PM   #409
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Yup. Woo statistics. No matter the proposition it is always 50:50 so pretty good odds!
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Old 20th August 2015, 06:52 PM   #410
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Originally Posted by Daylightstar View Post
This thread apparently.
Which phenomenon you posted in that thread did not get a fitting explanation, according to you?
The bathroom door shutting by itself in the warped frame and the hook latch locking itself. The flaw in all of the explanations is that I would have heard something from all of that happening behind my back, I didn't, I simply turned around and it was done.

I'ld have to reread the old thread but I'm not certain I was completely satisfied with the explanation for the car batteries, however, not being a mechanic, I might not have understood the explanations.
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Old 20th August 2015, 07:02 PM   #411
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duplicate post

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Old 20th August 2015, 07:15 PM   #412
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http://www.livescience.com/49244-ima...n=related-test

When people have near death experiences, what is seen in the brain indicates that they are not imagining, but are actually viewing something. I don't know if they literally saw what they remember because memory might be compromised considering the circumstances where this happens to occur is in a de-oxygenated brain.

http://discovermagazine.com/2013/dec...-in-the-matrix

I guess I'm a "red pill" kind of gal, but it's not necessarily based in woo.

My thoughts on the bathroom door closing and locking itself was that it was probably just a glitch in the matrix.

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Old 20th August 2015, 11:39 PM   #413
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Jodie using science with tongs, because eww, to facty truth quad ergo hic ipso show us how science is all math gone wild.

I'm convinced.

If you club me in the head, do I not accede?
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Old 20th August 2015, 11:53 PM   #414
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Originally Posted by Jodie View Post
http://www.livescience.com/49244-ima...n=related-test

When people have near death experiences, what is seen in the brain indicates that they are not imagining, but are actually viewing something. I don't know if they literally saw what they remember because memory might be compromised considering the circumstances where this happens to occur is in a de-oxygenated brain.

http://discovermagazine.com/2013/dec...-in-the-matrix

I guess I'm a "red pill" kind of gal, but it's not necessarily based in woo.

My thoughts on the bathroom door closing and locking itself was that it was probably just a glitch in the matrix.
If a brain is not necessary for conscious thought, what does it actually do? Are such activities in brain areas associated with perception that you mention a facade?
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Old 21st August 2015, 09:19 AM   #415
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Originally Posted by Jodie View Post
http://www.livescience.com/49244-ima...n=related-test

When people have near death experiences, what is seen in the brain indicates that they are not imagining, but are actually viewing something. I don't know if they literally saw what they remember because memory might be compromised considering the circumstances where this happens to occur is in a de-oxygenated brain.
Your citation doesn't discuss at all what the "flow" of neuronal activity is during a near death experience or during anoxia Your citation also appears to compare brain activity in awake people imagining "fantasies" versus viewing videos, and notes that special software had to be designed to dissect out the neuronal flow and that even then there were ambiguities. Do you have a good reference for brain activity during near death experiences using the authors' methods? And what the brain activity is like if someone is dreaming of plausible events versus being told to imagine a complete fantasy while awake?
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Old 21st August 2015, 09:29 AM   #416
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Originally Posted by Jodie View Post
The bathroom door shutting by itself in the warped frame and the hook latch locking itself. The flaw in all of the explanations is that I would have heard something from all of that happening behind my back, I didn't, I simply turned around and it was done.

I'ld have to reread the old thread but I'm not certain I was completely satisfied with the explanation for the car batteries, however, not being a mechanic, I might not have understood the explanations.
You did get some reasonable explanations. However, you countered them with objections which essentially were appeals to impossibilities and appeal to your own work related hightened attention in certain situations.
All of it unverifiable.
In addition to that, the anecdote appears to be missing information.

All the extended anecdote reveals is that you appear to be rather quick to accept the paranormal as an explanation, and in extension to that, quick to use the anecdote as support for belief in the afterlife.
Even though no connection between the anecdote and such belief is shown or made plausible.
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Old 21st August 2015, 09:30 AM   #417
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Originally Posted by Jodie View Post
...
My thoughts on the bathroom door closing and locking itself was that it was probably just a glitch in the matrix.
Unless apparently missing information is added to the anecdote.
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Old 21st August 2015, 09:59 AM   #418
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Originally Posted by Jodie View Post
http://www.livescience.com/49244-ima...n=related-test

When people have near death experiences, what is seen in the brain indicates that they are not imagining, but are actually viewing something. I don't know if they literally saw what they remember because memory might be compromised considering the circumstances where this happens to occur is in a de-oxygenated brain.

http://discovermagazine.com/2013/dec...-in-the-matrix

I guess I'm a "red pill" kind of gal, but it's not necessarily based in woo.

My thoughts on the bathroom door closing and locking itself was that it was probably just a glitch in the matrix.

Where in the first linked article is the reference to NDE? I don't see it. The article describes a new method of EEG analysis that allows the researchers to investigate the flow of activity through neural pathways.

There is no way to use this technology during an unplanned near death event. In fact the EEG during a cardiac standstill or deep hypoxemia will be very low amplitude, undetectable in some cases.

On what, then, do you base your statement "When people have near death experiences, what is seen in the brain indicates that they are not imagining, but are actually viewing something"???
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Old 21st August 2015, 12:45 PM   #419
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Originally Posted by MuDPhuD View Post
Where in the first linked article is the reference to NDE? I don't see it. The article describes a new method of EEG analysis that allows the researchers to investigate the flow of activity through neural pathways.

There is no way to use this technology during an unplanned near death event. In fact the EEG during a cardiac standstill or deep hypoxemia will be very low amplitude, undetectable in some cases.

On what, then, do you base your statement "When people have near death experiences, what is seen in the brain indicates that they are not imagining, but are actually viewing something"???
I of course agree with all of your points.

I also was thinking about what if somehow one could do a sophisticated EEG in a near death (I hate that term) experience? Even if one could, the NDE person cannot be "seeing" an actual visual image of an afterlife in any case (if they could the image on their retinas would be either the inside of their eyelids or, if eyes open, the emergency medical team). So if there was a life after death, the sensing of it have to enter the brain through some non-physical way. In fact, one shouldn't seen neuronal "flow" from the visual cortex, but instead from some afterlife-sensor region of the brain. Even further, given the presumption that there must be a non-physical existence for experiencing an afterlife, wouldn't any involvement of the physical brain in these NDE visions argue against an afterlife?

My objection to the term near death experience is that, by definition, the person never actually died. If you really died, then you would not be able to come back to tell of the experience. If NDEs were called the correct term, minimally conscious experiences, people would be more hesitate to find them exciting and mysterious.
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Old 21st August 2015, 03:32 PM   #420
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Originally Posted by Donn View Post
Jodie using science with tongs, because eww, to facty truth quad ergo hic ipso show us how science is all math gone wild.

I'm convinced.

If you club me in the head, do I not accede?
You mean do you physically die? Sure, but I don't think that's the end of you.
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Old 21st August 2015, 04:03 PM   #421
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Originally Posted by Sideroxylon View Post
If a brain is not necessary for conscious thought, what does it actually do? Are such activities in brain areas associated with perception that you mention a facade?
The brain is necessary for conscious thought here on earth. Our brains evolved to make sense of what we see here. To illustrate the point; a person born blind that regains their vision only sees blobs of light at first because they have to learn how to see. If you isolate a child without stimulation the brain doesn't develop the pathways needed to interact with his/her environment. The same child may never learn to fully speak after a certain point. The brain is the tool used to develop consciousness within the limits of this earthly experience. It's a blank slate at birth, however, the baby is definitely alive. I don't think your personality or sense of individual self survives death.

To answer your second question; No, I don't think it's a facade. The MRI used in the research indicates in what direction the neural impulses are spreading in the brain. In the cases of NDE research, the direction of these impulses seem to indicate that the people are actually seeing something as opposed to imagining it, which produces impulses moving in a different direction within the brain. When a person first sees something that they don't understand they tend to superimpose the familiar in order to make sense of what they are seeing. At the same time, I don't think you can trust someone's memory under these kinds of circumstances. Anesthesia can interfere with short term memory recall post-op even when the person doesn't report an NDE or have any kind of close call with death. All I can assume is that the person dying saw something real during their NDE because that's what the brain activity indicates, but I can't say that their reports of what the after life looks like is very reliable. Everyone seems to have a different experience when you look at the details of their stories.

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Old 21st August 2015, 04:17 PM   #422
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Originally Posted by Giordano View Post
Your citation doesn't discuss at all what the "flow" of neuronal activity is during a near death experience or during anoxia Your citation also appears to compare brain activity in awake people imagining "fantasies" versus viewing videos, and notes that special software had to be designed to dissect out the neuronal flow and that even then there were ambiguities. Do you have a good reference for brain activity during near death experiences using the authors' methods? And what the brain activity is like if someone is dreaming of plausible events versus being told to imagine a complete fantasy while awake?
I don't have access to the actual research but if you are willing to pay a fee it can be reviewed. The ambiguities come from no two brains being exactly alike, there are some general similarities, but your neuronal pathways are developed by individual differences in brain physiology and your personal experiences, or neuroplasticity. I'ld be interested to see what you thought of their methods if you have that kind of background.
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Old 21st August 2015, 04:25 PM   #423
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Originally Posted by MuDPhuD View Post
Where in the first linked article is the reference to NDE? I don't see it. The article describes a new method of EEG analysis that allows the researchers to investigate the flow of activity through neural pathways.



On what, then, do you base your statement "When people have near death experiences, what is seen in the brain indicates that they are not imagining, but are actually viewing something"???
I based my comments/opinions on this research.

http://http://io9.com/a-new-scientif...ces-1110395345
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Old 21st August 2015, 05:23 PM   #424
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Originally Posted by Jodie View Post
The brain is necessary for conscious thought here on earth. Our brains evolved to make sense of what we see here. To illustrate the point; a person born blind that regains their vision only sees blobs of light at first because they have to learn how to see.
Cite?
A basic wiki reference on case studies does not agree with your assertion.
They have difficulties with pattern recognition - but the don't "see blobs of light"
Quote:
If you isolate a child without stimulation the brain doesn't develop the pathways needed to interact with his/her environment. The same child may never learn to fully speak after a certain point. The brain is the tool used to develop consciousness within the limits of this earthly experience. It's a blank slate at birth, however, the baby is definitely alive.
Cite or just another assertion? It was a common attitude in the 17th century but human psychology studies have moved on a bit since then. See Tabula rasaWP
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Old 21st August 2015, 06:42 PM   #425
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I'm not sure what citations you want, case studies of child deprivation, newborn brain physiology/neurology, or both?
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Old 21st August 2015, 07:05 PM   #426
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2741295/

http://http://www.academia.edu/10313...n_A_Case_Study

A child deprived of language after age five or six can't catch up because the neural pathways that allow the development of language atrophy.

http://http://usatoday30.usatoday.co...ychology_x.htm

Finlay argues that psychologists should stop looking for a "math gene" or other genes to explain behaviors in simple ways. "Development can no longer be viewed as a simple passage from the embryo to the mature organism directed by the information encoded in the genes," she says, "but rather a structured collaboration between the information in the organism and the environment."

"Blank slate" was a poor choice of words but the newborn spends the first year of life laying down neural pathways to interpret whatever environmental input the child happens to be exposed to in that year.

I can cite more if you like, but a child's brain development depends on nurture as much as biology/physiology and other environmental factors. I suppose you could compare the brain to a sponge rather than a blank slate. It's an organ of potential but it's limits are strictly for processing information here, not for some other level of reality.

http://http://io9.com/this-is-why-ei...urs-1441971724

This is why Einstein was capable of doing his thought experiments. Maybe we haven't evolved enough to recognize what's around us that might indicate that this isn't all there is to life.

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Old 22nd August 2015, 01:02 AM   #427
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Originally Posted by Jodie View Post
I'm not sure what citations you want, case studies of child deprivation, newborn brain physiology/neurology, or both?
What part of the two statements were confusing?
Originally Posted by EHocking View Post
...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recover...d_case_studies ...don't "see blobs of light"
...
Originally Posted by EHocking View Post
See Tabula rasaWP
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Old 22nd August 2015, 01:06 AM   #428
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Originally Posted by Jodie View Post
...It's an organ of potential but it's limits are strictly for processing information here, not for some other level of reality.
What on earth is "some other level of reality"?
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Old 22nd August 2015, 02:00 AM   #429
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Originally Posted by Jodie View Post
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2741295/

http://http://www.academia.edu/10313...n_A_Case_Study

A child deprived of language after age five or six can't catch up because the neural pathways that allow the development of language atrophy.
No. That paper does not say that "neural pathways atrophy".
Quote:
Did you actually read the title of that article?
Psychology erases the idea of children as 'blank slates'

Basically the opposite of what you asserted. A poor choice of words indeed.
Quote:
..."Blank slate" was a poor choice of words but the newborn spends the first year of life laying down neural pathways to interpret whatever environmental input the child happens to be exposed to in that year.
Brain development is pretty well understood, while the brain undergoes the most growth and change in these first few months, development continues into early adulthood.

I can cite more if you like, but a child's brain development depends on nurture as much as biology/physiology and other environmental factors. I suppose you could compare the brain to a sponge rather than a blank slate.[/quote]And all of that has what to do with the subject of NDE, except that we tend to find that people with similar social stimuli tend to experience very similiar (if not identical) NDE "visions".
Quote:
It's an organ of potential but it's limits are strictly for processing information here, not for some other level of reality.

http://http://io9.com/this-is-why-ei...urs-1441971724

This is why Einstein was capable of doing his thought experiments. Maybe we haven't evolved enough to recognize what's around us that might indicate that this isn't all there is to life.
You, me and the rest of the posters here are just as evolved as Einstein was. I don't see your point at all in that non sequitur.
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Old 22nd August 2015, 02:59 AM   #430
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Originally Posted by Jodie View Post
I based my comments/opinions on this research.

http://http://io9.com/a-new-scientif...ces-1110395345

http://io9.com/a-new-scientific-expl...ces-1110395345

There's no evidence in that article whatsoever for the survival of consciousness.
The article doesn't even provide a reason for the belief in survival of consciousness.
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Old 22nd August 2015, 03:01 AM   #431
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Originally Posted by Jodie View Post
The brain is necessary for conscious thought here on earth. Our brains evolved to make sense of what we see here. To illustrate the point; a person born blind that regains their vision only sees blobs of light at first because they have to learn how to see. If you isolate a child without stimulation the brain doesn't develop the pathways needed to interact with his/her environment. The same child may never learn to fully speak after a certain point. The brain is the tool used to develop consciousness within the limits of this earthly experience. It's a blank slate at birth, however, the baby is definitely alive. I don't think your personality or sense of individual self survives death.

To answer your second question; No, I don't think it's a facade. The MRI used in the research indicates in what direction the neural impulses are spreading in the brain. In the cases of NDE research, the direction of these impulses seem to indicate that the people are actually seeing something as opposed to imagining it, which produces impulses moving in a different direction within the brain. When a person first sees something that they don't understand they tend to superimpose the familiar in order to make sense of what they are seeing. At the same time, I don't think you can trust someone's memory under these kinds of circumstances. Anesthesia can interfere with short term memory recall post-op even when the person doesn't report an NDE or have any kind of close call with death. All I can assume is that the person dying saw something real during their NDE because that's what the brain activity indicates, but I can't say that their reports of what the after life looks like is very reliable. Everyone seems to have a different experience when you look at the details of their stories.
Do you believe we can have concious thought without a brain?
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Old 22nd August 2015, 04:20 AM   #432
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Originally Posted by Jodie View Post
You mean do you physically die? Sure, but I don't think that's the end of you.
No, I mean if you club me in the head with your blunt posts often enough, do I not accede to your control? You know, like I wrote?

In the end, you will win. Bravo. An army of meat-drones with holes where their think-stuff used to be — and you, leading them, chanting, "After life. After death. No brain strife. No brain left."

A hollow victory.

Originally Posted by Jodie View Post
The brain is necessary for conscious thought here on earth.
But off earth — in Narnia — it's all thinking out of the brain-pan.

Quote:
I don't think your personality or sense of individual self survives death.
So, what are you saying Jodie?

Finally, we have solid suggestions of alternatives to science and math:
Quote:
…The MRI … research … neural impulses … Anesthesia… short term memory … brain activity
Yes, it seems the best way to get answers without science is to use ... science.

I'm off to divide things by three again.
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Old 22nd August 2015, 08:50 AM   #433
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Originally Posted by Jodie View Post
I based my comments/opinions on this research.



http://http://io9.com/a-new-scientif...ces-1110395345

So, your statement about the flow of information in circuits is not based on your cite of the article about information flow through circuits, but on this article about EEG synchronization after cardiac standstill:

http://www.pnas.org/content/110/35/14432.full

Please note the last paragraph of the authors discussion section:

"NDE represents a biological paradox that challenges our understanding of the brain and has been advocated as evidence for life after death and for a noncorporeal basis of human consciousness (39⇓⇓–42), based on the unsupported belief that the brain cannot possibly be the source of highly vivid and lucid conscious experiences during clinical death (9, 12). By presenting evidence of highly organized brain activity and neurophysiologic features consistent with conscious processing at near-death, we now provide a scientific framework to begin to explain the highly lucid and realer-than-real mental experiences reported by near-death survivors."

The authors are suggesting that the brain may be generating internal content, similar to dreaming, after cardiac standstill. They do not believe their results imply the existence consciousness without brain activity, quite the contrary, they state that such a belief is "unsupported".

There is no evidence to support your claim that information flow in the brain during a NDE is more similar to actually seeing, than it is to imagining. You simply made it up and are apparently not willing to admit it.
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Old 22nd August 2015, 08:55 AM   #434
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Originally Posted by Jodie View Post
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2741295/

http://http://www.academia.edu/10313...n_A_Case_Study

A child deprived of language after age five or six can't catch up because the neural pathways that allow the development of language atrophy.

http://http://usatoday30.usatoday.co...ychology_x.htm

Finlay argues that psychologists should stop looking for a "math gene" or other genes to explain behaviors in simple ways. "Development can no longer be viewed as a simple passage from the embryo to the mature organism directed by the information encoded in the genes," she says, "but rather a structured collaboration between the information in the organism and the environment."

"Blank slate" was a poor choice of words but the newborn spends the first year of life laying down neural pathways to interpret whatever environmental input the child happens to be exposed to in that year.

I can cite more if you like, but a child's brain development depends on nurture as much as biology/physiology and other environmental factors. I suppose you could compare the brain to a sponge rather than a blank slate. It's an organ of potential but it's limits are strictly for processing information here, not for some other level of reality.

http://http://io9.com/this-is-why-ei...urs-1441971724

This is why Einstein was capable of doing his thought experiments. Maybe we haven't evolved enough to recognize what's around us that might indicate that this isn't all there is to life.
My apologies if this is simply meant as an interesting but unrelated sidetrack. However, none of this is support for an extra-physical consciousness. If anything it supports what we already knew: the physical brain is the site of, and fully supports or restricts, the mental processes. When the brain is incompletely physically developed its further development depends on what it experiences. New physical synapses and neurons can be shown to develop in response to these experiences. As a consequence, the brain then becomes still better at processing these experiences and producing appropriate responses. There is a window in brain physical development for it to be able to physically change in response to certain experiences: language development is one example. If the time period the brain is physically able to develop in response to languages is passed without the appropriate language experience, then later experiences have difficulty alter the physical brain appropriately to allow for full language acquisition.

This is the basis behind "you cannot teach an old dog new tricks." In fact, it is not that different from the way other organs, such as muscles, develop. Why are most of the best athletes under 30 years old?

If consciousness was separate from the physical brain and could develop separately, then one would be able to acquire language equally well at any developmental stage of the physical brain. If reincarnation was true, wouldn't the non-physical consciousness be able to use the languages that it had acquired in prior lives immediately on birth? Or if the brain was a "radio" receiver that needed to acquire a certain maturity before being able to receive the non-physical consciousness, then wouldn't an early lack of that brain hearing a language play no part in the pre-experienced consciousness being able to speak through the later, language-inexperienced, but otherwise fully developed brain? In fact if reincarnation is true, why would a French soul be limited to speaking only English when first birthed and raised in an English family until that child was exposed to French latter? Once the brain was developed enough to communicate with the soul, it should be able to speak whichever languages the soul had already learned.

I realize that there are attempts by believers in reincarnation to explain this, but it always seemed to me to be a near desperate attempt to explain illogic resulting from a pre-drawn conclusion.

Last edited by Giordano; 22nd August 2015 at 08:59 AM.
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Old 22nd August 2015, 09:15 AM   #435
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Originally Posted by Giordano View Post
I of course agree with all of your points.



I also was thinking about what if somehow one could do a sophisticated EEG in a near death (I hate that term) experience? Even if one could, the NDE person cannot be "seeing" an actual visual image of an afterlife in any case (if they could the image on their retinas would be either the inside of their eyelids or, if eyes open, the emergency medical team). So if there was a life after death, the sensing of it have to enter the brain through some non-physical way. In fact, one shouldn't seen neuronal "flow" from the visual cortex, but instead from some afterlife-sensor region of the brain. Even further, given the presumption that there must be a non-physical existence for experiencing an afterlife, wouldn't any involvement of the physical brain in these NDE visions argue against an afterlife?



My objection to the term near death experience is that, by definition, the person never actually died. If you really died, then you would not be able to come back to tell of the experience. If NDEs were called the correct term, minimally conscious experiences, people would be more hesitate to find them exciting and mysterious.

Yes, in fact, see the article Jodie provided a link to. The authors show that the EEG shows synchronized activity (in rats) after cardiac standstill. Their conclusion is that there could be synchronized brain activity during a human NDE, which could explain the patients' reported experiences.

I don't believe we even need to go that far as, AFAIK, there is NO reported NDE experience where the actual memories reported can be pinned down to the exact period of a few minutes during the resuscitation. These things are always reported later, when the patient has recovered. The dreams could very well have occurred at any time before, during, or after resuscitation. Typically a resuscitated patient will be alive with stable vital signs for some time before waking and responding.
Dreams do not occur in real time. You can have a dream which you remember as having taken hours in an actual elapsed time of only a minute or two. That is all the time required for a resuscitated patient to have a dream, based on immediately preceding hullabaloo of activity around them (which later is misconstrued to have occurred while they were being resuscitated), in the same way that events in a dream will suddenly, on waking, be actually present in the room around you.

The problem with NDE as a term, for me, is that so many misunderstand it to mean the patient has actually died and been brought back to life, when, as you say, they have actually only almost died. It is in fact NEAR death, not actual DEATH (from which there is no return).
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Old 22nd August 2015, 01:28 PM   #436
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Originally Posted by EHocking View Post
What on earth is "some other level of reality"?
What remains after we die and isn't limited by our physical senses.
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Old 22nd August 2015, 01:36 PM   #437
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Originally Posted by EHocking View Post
No. That paper does not say that "neural pathways atrophy".
Did you actually read the title of that article?
Psychology erases the idea of children as 'blank slates'

Basically the opposite of what you asserted. A poor choice of words indeed.
Brain development is pretty well understood, while the brain undergoes the most growth and change in these first few months, development continues into early adulthood.

I can cite more if you like, but a child's brain development depends on nurture as much as biology/physiology and other environmental factors. I suppose you could compare the brain to a sponge rather than a blank slate.
And all of that has what to do with the subject of NDE, except that we tend to find that people with similar social stimuli tend to experience very similiar (if not identical) NDE "visions".You, me and the rest of the posters here are just as evolved as Einstein was. I don't see your point at all in that non sequitur.[/quote]

They do atrophy, after you pass a certain stage in childhood development, you can only manage limited linguistic ability.

I'm demonstrating the limitations of the average brain to assimilate what information is perceived. An NDE represents something seen, but we can only interpret the input in a form that is familiar and makes sense to us should we return after an NDE to talk about it.

It's the fact that the brain perceives "something", what that "something" is, is the question in my mind. You can't dismiss that as indicative of nothing.

Einstein had some unusual attributes in his brain that might have allowed him to synthesize more information faster than the rest of us. They were genetic mutations, but they gave him an edge. It allowed him to see his ideas in images rather than words, to daydream, and come up with his thought experiments. Our brains are still evolving, and it's possible that one day someone will figure out where to look for the evidence that there is more to us than just our finite minds and physical bodies.

Last edited by Jodie; 22nd August 2015 at 01:42 PM.
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Old 22nd August 2015, 01:57 PM   #438
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Originally Posted by Daylightstar View Post
http://io9.com/a-new-scientific-expl...ces-1110395345

There's no evidence in that article whatsoever for the survival of consciousness.
The article doesn't even provide a reason for the belief in survival of consciousness.
The rats were seeing something, not hallucinating or imagining, and they were trying to figure out what it was they were looking at.

If it happens to them then chances are something similar happens to humans during an NDE.

There is evidence all around us and within us that life exists, but we couldn't take the molecules that make up a simple organism and create life until now:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/scie...aying-god.html

Eventually we can control the modifications needed to enhance our brains to facilitate evolution. If the afterlife exists, it will probably be found the way Einstein imagined his theories.

Einstein says it better than I do, so far I see nothing contradictory in believing life is eternal:

http://sillysutras.com/2011/01/https...reincarnation/

Last edited by Jodie; 22nd August 2015 at 02:08 PM.
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Old 22nd August 2015, 02:21 PM   #439
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This quote, at the beginning of the linked article, is sourced:

Quote:
“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, …Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism.
~ Albert Einstein, as quoted in his New York Times Obituary, April 19, 1955)

but I'd love to know the source, to get the context of this one:

Quote:
“Our separation of each other is an optical illusion of consciousness.”

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Old 22nd August 2015, 03:08 PM   #440
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Originally Posted by Jodie View Post
The rats were seeing something, not hallucinating or imagining, and they were trying to figure out what it was they were looking at.
Do you not "see" when you dream? Or do you think there's really a tiny film-set being erected in your head with live-action actors that you can see?

Quote:
If it happens to them then chances are something similar happens to humans during an NDE.
I too don't get this fascination with the near part.

Is the idea that the closer the mind gets to death, the more it sees into mystical realms beyond? How could that even be tested for, controlled? It's bizarre.

Quote:
Eventually we can control the modifications needed to enhance our brains to facilitate evolution.
Because right now, we're just getting in evolution's way. Wut?

Quote:
If the afterlife exists, it will probably be found the way Einstein imagined his theories.
See the difference is that his hypotheses were taken and tested repeatedly against the factual world and gradually emerged as theory which works.

I am sure you surge elated to every tweet by Deepak, but a mountain of candy floss is still a tepid pool of dirty sugar at the end of the day.

Quote:
Einstein says it better than I do
How noble of you to be so humble.

Quote:
..so far I see nothing contradictory in believing life is eternal
So? "Life is eternal," for shame. Let us wave all sense of decorum and away upon these distracting red herrings. Mush!
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