Near Death Experiences

I've watched several shows on near death experiences and although many scientists explain quite well how some things can be explained some instances baffle me.
For example a girl of seven drew a picture of when she was five, and she had a near death experience. In the picture she drew herself floating above her bed being resusitated, and a lady standing at the end of the bed with a tall black hat. The lady with the hat was the head doctor and at that particular hospital they wear black hats, so that in an emergency situation they can be easily spotted. In the picture she also showed herself floating along side jesus and angels. The little girl then said that a very bright light told her a secret, why she existed.
Another startling thing is the complete personality changes. The people who have been through near death experiences significantly change psychologically. A doctor who performed tests to envoke the experience of near death stimulated the areas of test subjects brain that are stimulated moments before death. The subjects reported seeing bright lights, tunnels leading toward a bright light, and other parallels but none of them changed significantly.
I thought that maybe almost dying would change anyone significantly but my grandma almost died recently we were unsure wether she would live or die for about a week. After the ordeal she certainly appreciated the fact that she was alive, and aimed to enjoy life more but in no way did she change like the NDErs did. Other people who almost die but don't have a near death experience (bright light's, understanding the purpose for their existence) don't have significant personality changes that the NDErs have instantaneously after coming 'back'.

I've examined the evidence (well, I've read a book and watched two shows) and I'm keeping an active mind about the subject. I think that the claims (thousands) and parallels (thousands) and evidence of something possibly occuring after life has ceased (accurate descriptions of environment and surgical procedure, personality changes) mean it should be studied seriously and critically.

What are others views on this issue?

Post 1

Sunday, September 21, 2003 - 11:24am

I do not have a strong opinion on the issue except that Near Death Experiences (NDEs) are becoming more valid and familiar as a source to find out perhaps what does happen to us after our lives go out of existence

Post 2

Monday, September 22, 2003 - 5:34pm

Well, regarding the little girl, I would argue that is important to consider culture when making such an assessment.

To make a very complicated arguement short, we need to remember when non-critical thinkers (such as the little girl) are existing in a society, their ideology is encoded with the images, beliefs, and biases of the culture itself. Culture can imprint itself on all things we interact with - magazines, speech, and just about everything else. With this in mind, it is not too surprising that a little girl drew pictures of Jesus and angels...and in this case, witches too. Her ideology was been substantially encoded with her cultures' - a culture that largely believes in Jesus.

Regarding
"Another startling thing is the complete personality changes. The people who have been through near death experiences significantly change psychologically. A doctor who performed tests to envoke the experience of near death stimulated the areas of test subjects brain that are stimulated moments before death. The subjects reported seeing bright lights, tunnels leading toward a bright light, and other parallels but none of them changed significantly."

Well, I think almost anyone would have their perspective changed by a near death experience. And the lights people see and everything, I would state that is just a result of the physiology of the brain - it's just the nuerons firing, or in the case of potentialy dying, misfiring.

It does'nt help that in emergency rooms, people are always under a bright light (so personnel can take care of you). I'd argue that has something to do with it too.

Post 3

Sunday, October 12, 2003 - 4:41am

This is my first post to solohq, so hello everyone :-)

I'm inclined to agree with Marcus that we should be "active minded" regarding evidence of some kind of afterlife.

I've actually been thinking quite a bit lately about whether, if there is some form of afterlife and presumably a conscious creator*, this would in any way invalidate Objectivism? I'm inclined to think not, but I'm relatively new to Objectivism so I'd be interested to hear your opinions.

*note I am speaking hypothetically and by "conscious creator" I'm thinking more along the lines of Enlightenment deism or even aristotle's "first cause" than anything organised religion has to offer....

Post 4

Thursday, October 16, 2003 - 12:55am

Glad to meet ya, Matthew. Before I type a word on this topic, I'd highly recommend George H. Smith's "Atheism: The Case Against God". It's easily purchased on Amazon, and VERY much worth the cover price and shipping charge.

Okay. Let's begin with reality. Reality is what we--humans--recognize as being existant. It is verifiable, available to our senses, and internalized by our mind--through reason.

To say that something is SUPERnatural--having the conscious ability to create things through whim alone, among other omni-type attributes--means to say it lies outside the bounds of reality, and is therefore not only unknown, but ~unknowable~. We would have no way to analyze and interpret its existence. As well say that giant, super-intelligent chunks of cheese created the universe. Such an idea is so absurd, one would hopefully disregard it as a pointless postulation.

This being the case, that man must be capable of sensing and analyzing a thing's existence to know or theorize about it, let's assume--only for the sake of addressing your question--that the Super Cheese is verifiable through objective scientific means. It has constituent elements, and its processes are understable. It is readily available, for all those willing and capable, to be studied and placed logically within the context of our knowledge of reality.

And if something is scientifically verifiable, it cannot, ever, invalidate Objectivism. It would simply mean: X + Y = Super Cheese.

So no, a ~provable~ supernatural consciousness wouldn't harm Objectivism.

(Perhaps you mean in terms of "Why are we here? / Are we supposed to serve the Super Cheese?"...If so, myself or others here could address this as well.)

But a key point in this topic is to realize that the term "provable supernatural consiousness" is a big contradiction in terms. The supernatural cannot be proven, as it lies outside nature, which is the only thing, in all its vastness, that our senses can detect and that our minds can verify. If it can never be verified, it simply doesn't exist for humans, and remains a ridiculous chunk of Super Cheese.

Check out Smith's "Atheism..." and I'm sure you'll find what you're looking for, if I haven't answered adequately.

Thanks,
J

Post 5

Sunday, October 19, 2003 - 9:09am

Jeremy, you are saying, I think, that nothing supernatural can be proven to exist because all that can be proven is in the domain of the natural. I agree. This does not rule out the supernatural, however, as the provable is only a subset of the true.

If there was powerfully strong circumstantial evidence for something supernatural, and we were to accept its existence, our belief would be as sound as any of our best scientific assumptions. Is there such evidence? Purportedly, but I won't go into that.

Matthew, suppose that you have no afterlife. Death will come and you will have no sense of ever having existed. You could have died at any previous moment of life before now, and been no worse off ultimately. How can such a life be your standard of value, as Objectivist ethics would maintain? It can't, in my opinion.

Do true values persist? Yes, and so do our lives, with supernatural help.

Post 6

Sunday, October 19, 2003 - 11:22am

Jeremy and Bill, thank you both for your responses.

Jeremy, glad to meet you too :-) I agree with you.

Bill, I don't agree about there being "powerfully strong circumstantial evidence" of the supernatural. The life we have here and now is the only life of which we can be sure, and we ought to make the most of it (which I think is ultimately what the Objectivist ethics tells us). If there does turn out to be an afterlife, great. If not, then when death comes we'll know we've made the most of life.

Best,
Matthew

Post 7

Sunday, October 19, 2003 - 8:45pm

Monday, October 20, 2003 - 10:45pm

Bill writes, "Jeremy, you are saying, I think, that nothing supernatural can be proven to exist because all that can be proven is in the domain of the natural. I agree. This does not rule out the supernatural, however, as the provable is only a subset of the true."

At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, if you agree that nothing supernatural can be proven, yet assert that the supernatural exists, then the veracity of your belief rests solely on your faith. The only question left to ask, therefore, is what proves the veracity of your faith? What about your belief is so overwhemingly truthful that I should accept it as a fact of reality? If the premise of its truth relies on your belief, shouldn't everyone have faith in me when I say we are all the progeny of green elves mated with Super Cheese?

"If there was powerfully strong circumstantial evidence for something supernatural, and we were to accept its existence, our belief would be as sound as any of our best scientific assumptions"

2+2=4 is not a "scientific assumption".

J

Post 9

Tuesday, October 21, 2003 - 3:00am

Bill that's an amazing story, but not IMHO evidence of the supernatural. Cases of "miracle cures" are often explained in scientific terms years later. Interestingly, having run searches on a number of major search engines, that particular report that you linked is the only reference to the incident I can find. I would have expected at least one or two other publications to have picked up on it...

Post 10

Wednesday, October 22, 2003 - 3:07pm

Returning for a moment to the NDE topic, here's an interesting one for you, Marcus.

No disrespect to Super Cheese, Jeremy, but I wouldn't believe any claims you make for him unless provided with evidence. And the same applies for whatever seemingly ludicrous claims I might make.

I address your question "what proves the veracity of your faith?" by reiteration of what we agree on - it is not to be proven, i.e. can't be deduced from existing theory, else faith is not faith. Ask, rather, the more general question, "what makes you believe?", and I'd answer that it's an inductive leap based on the evidence.

Science develops in the same way - inductively that is. In the context of a given theory, if events occur of a type which cannot be deduced within the theory, then its assumptions are refined or enlarged, or new concepts are formed and introduced, to account for such events.

The process whereby I come to accept the concept and existence of a certain supernatural someone is similar, which is why I said my belief was at least as sound as a scientific hypothesis. (Not that it is a scientific hypothesis - the analogy illustrates my inductive leap.) Moreover, the strength of the whole of the evidence pushes me beyond conjecture to the point of realisation.

I can't justify my conclusions without going into this evidence, thereby violating the scope of this forum - read some good Christian Apologetics sites. I was converted, but stand firm in the atheistic faith and the kind of pride which separates one from the Creator, and you need not suffer the same.

Good Luck :-)

Post 11

Wednesday, October 22, 2003 - 9:39pm

There are types of faith, Bill. For instance, I can have great faith in my friends and family not to harm me intentionally, or in a business partner with whom I have a longstanding relationship of profitable trade. Although I can never know for an absolute, universal, beyond mathematical certainty, I can reasonably expect to be able to rely on these folks. I can only prove this to an outside party--excluded from direct knowledge of the relationship--by citing case after case wherein my friends, partners or family members have been reliable, and have created in me a faith in their benevolence. I can state incidents and trials that occurred in reality, where others could observe, or that outsiders could have experienced and therefore can relate to. This is all I assume you require to pin up your faith. And it's all I ask you to provide. If you are unwilling--unable, really--to provide such (beyond third-party, anectdotal "evidence", and ~feelings~ of reverence and rapture) then I have no problem discontinuing the discussion. I, after all, like myself.

J

"There has never been a philosophy, a theory or a doctrine that attacked (or "limited") reason, which did not also preach submission to the power of some authority."

-Rand, "The Comprachicos"

Post 12

Friday, October 24, 2003 - 6:05am

With regard to supernatural claims I think this quote from Voltaire sums it up nicely.

"What is not in nature can never be true."-

Post 13

Friday, October 24, 2003 - 9:14am

Since you asked for it, Jeremy, here is some evidence that the natural world is not all there is.

(1) There is evidence of intelligent design in living systems, and hence of a designer. Even leading neo-Darwinist Richard Dawkins concedes that:

"We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully 'designed' to have come into existence by chance." - The Blind Watchmaker, p. 43.

The the mechanisms of evolution - random mutation and natural selection - are not capable of producing or increasing the complex information found in living systems. Natural selection acts on existing information, producing variation within a kind (e.g. dogs from wolves), while mutations generally lead to harmful loss of information. Also, there is no way that evolution can make the jump from chemicals to a primitive cell, as the cell is "irreducibly complex" - to function it requires a complex organisation of thousands of biochemical machines.

"All point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn out to reduce the genetic information and not to increase it." - Lee Spetner, Not by Chance, p. 138.

"�mutations can only cause changes in existing information. There can be no increase in information, and in general the results are injurious. New blueprints for new functions or new organs cannot arise; mutations cannot be the source of new (creative) information." - Werner Gitt, In the Beginning was Information, p. 127.

"The simplicity that was once expected to be the foundation of life has proven to be a phantom; instead, systems of horrendous irreducible complexity inhabit the cell. The resulting realization that life was designed by an intelligence is a shock to us in the twentieth century who have gotten used to thinking of life as the result of simple natural laws." - Michael Behe, Darwin's Black Box, pp. 252-253.

Plus, we have the following problem: DNA is meaningless without the cellular machinery that interprets it, but this machinery is coded for by DNA - which "evolved" first?

(2) Left to natural processes alone, a brain is just a sophisticated piece of hardware which behaves deterministically and cannot give rise to self awareness, free will or any sense of the validity of its own reasoning. Yet we are self aware, make choices and, if sane, cannot successfully deny the validity of our reason. This suggests to me a supernatural component in our own design.

So, I believe the living world around us and our own inner experience are not adequately explained by existing popular explanations, and that they in fact defy all natural explanation. Does this mean we should go rushing to embrace the idea of some supposed god to fill the gaps? No. But in the Judeo-Christian God of the Bible we have a ready made explanation which was good enough for some of the best minds in Western history, so let us suspend any presuppositions and consider whether the Bible could be true. There is reason to believe what it has to say about its central character, Jesus Christ, because:

(a) Certainly Jesus was a real historical figure, for he is mentioned even by non-Christian ancient historians, the most reliable being Josephus and Tacitus. Josephus (37-101 AD) wrote:

"At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus.� And his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous.� And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them after his crucifixion and that he was alive; accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders." (Antiquities 18.63-64)

(b) The New Testament (NT) is the most trustworthy of all ancient historical documents in terms of the number of copies (5600) and their textual reliability (99.5%).

(c) The Gospels are eyewitness accounts or written under the direction of eyewitnesses, who had no reason to lie, given the persecution they faced for being followers of Jesus. It is unreasonable to think the disciples were not truthful in their testimony when most were eventually martyred - crucified, beheaded, flayed, speared - on account of it.

(d) Denial of the NT record is not evident in any contemporaneous writings.

(e) There are over 300 incidents recorded in the NT where Jesus fulfills Old Testament prophecy concerning the Messiah. This was not just creative writing, as is too improbable that the writers could have gotten away with it unchallenged. For, given a 95% chance of success with any single supposed hoax, the chance of perpetrating 300 combined is just two in ten million. The Christian religion could not have grown from such a base unless it was true.

I've only scratched the surface here, but these are the kind of reasons that lead me, firstly, to be able to accept supernatural explanations given sufficient evidence, and secondly, to see that there is such evidence attesting to the miraculous works and personage of Jesus. Trusting the record concerning him, I accept there is a God since Jesus spoke of Him, and even claimed to be Him.

Still, it does come down to faith in the end. But it is not an unreasoned faith based just on feelings - they are secondary, and in fact can be the cause of doubt.

If God exists, we are accountable to HIm. Though we've been given free will, the consequences for absolute individual sovereignty are dire. Because of this and the offensiveness of the central message of Christianity, that we are intrinsically damaged and need salvation, I don't expect any self-respecting Objectivist to give it the slightest credence - such was I.

Post 14

Friday, October 24, 2003 - 12:32pm

Bill,

1. Out-of-context quotes are not "evidence".

2. "Near-death" means that some biological functions, including the homeostatic functions of the brain, are no longer working reliably, so delusional halucinations are not surprising in such states.

3. Most of the participants on this list adhere to a primacy-of-existence philosophy, so we are particularly poor prospects for Christian soul-trawling. Your trawling would could be more productive elsewhere. Please demonstrate that being a Christian is at least minimally compatible with some residual remnants of rationality, and go trawl somewhere else.

Post 15

Friday, October 24, 2003 - 1:22pm

Bill, the reason I originally posted was because Matthew had a question or two. Now that Matthew has sufficiently stated his position, there's no reason to continue. I asked you to present your evidence in light of Matthew's questions, expecting he would get as much from your equivocations as he would from anything I could say. And I'm assuming he has.

It's not neccesary to project your suffering onto us any longer. I would almost commend you for having the God-fearing "courage" to confront Objectivism, but I'll leave it to your fellow Christians to applaud goals gained through fear.

J

Post 16

Friday, October 24, 2003 - 3:54pm

I read somewhere that there were all of these out of body experiences in hospital operating rooms, where the unconscious person would float above the doctors and look down on their body. Afterwards, they were able to give very good descriptions of the room.

The explanation was that their minds could fill in a lot of the gaps from what their eyes were able to see while they were mostly out. They could "see" things from above by filling in the details.

So some doctors started painting messages on the top of the lights and other objects that people claimed to be floating above. Simple messages that they couldn't miss, and could mention later. And of course, the messages were never part of the descriptions or memories.

Fun stuff.

Post 17

Friday, October 24, 2003 - 9:31pm

Bill:

Oh, how I would love to critique the quotations you provide above from a logical and historical perspective. Alas, my passion for the historical (in)accuracies of the bible and other apocrapha and other historical accounts have fadded in the last few years, as so have what I remember about the subject. I also had a passion in deconstructing the psuedo-science of so called design theory, too.

But jeese, asked me a few years ago, and I could have made what you assert sound really silly. You know it's all bunk, right?

Post 18

Saturday, October 25, 2003 - 4:33am

Bill, while there is corroboration for the existence of a human Jesus, there is also considerable evidence that the more mystical aspects of the Gospel story are based on earlier Pagan "Mystery cult" tales of a God-Man. However, I may be wrong but I seriously doubt that any of the other SOLOists have any interest in debating that, so e-mail me if you want citations.

Jeremy out of curiosity, what did you think of my position?

Matt

PS Apologies to all for this ruckus!

Post 19

Saturday, October 25, 2003 - 5:42am