amkerman wrote:This is not a particularly rational forum Dr. Parsetti. It is just another atheist forum. It is the offshoot of the old Dawkins forum. You will find radical skepticism, dismissal, misrepresentation, and (passive) aggression, and not much else (that is if you offer anything besides a materialistic account of anything). To be sure, and to be clear, there are exceptions to the rule, but it is the rule.

I just thought I would forewarn you; it's just my opinion, maybe you will have a different experience. I look forward to reading what you have to say, and asking questions where I can. I have done a good amount of NDE research (on the Internet, that is) and am very interested in the subject.

Welcome to ratskep, and cheers.

Come now amkerman!

Don't get whinging in this thread because you can't argue your assertions in other threads.

Take it elsewhere.

[/OT]

Now, where were we Dr?

Any comment on the physical nature of the afterlife? (from my previous question).

Dr.Parisetti wrote:Let me insist. Dead or not dead, how do we account for a) any consciousness at all, b) highly structured conscious experiences and c) the formation of long-term memories, when simply there is no brain.

That would be a good question if we could first establish that there are highly structured conscious experiences when there is no brain.

amerkan wrote:It is just another atheist forum.

No it isn't, it's a forum with a strong focus on rational scepticism and the sciences. Yes, a lot of rational sceptics are also atheists, amazingly.

You will find radical skepticism

Well, duh.

dismissal, misrepresentation

Like the way you've just dismissed and misrepresented the website, you mean.

DrParisetti wrote:And, sorry, oldskeptic, I am afraid you are confusing things. According to forensic medicine, clinical death is pronounced when the EEG is flat, which happens literally within a few seconds from when the hart stops pumping, and indicates absence of electrical activity.

Let me insist. Dead or not dead, how do we account for a) any consciousness at all, b) highly structured conscious experiences and c) the formation of long-term memories, when simply there is no brain.

I repeat. No "proof" whatsoever, just to get the discussion going. Thanks.

I've already responded to that question. I'm awaiting your reply.

DrParisetti wrote:Dear GrabamH, when I spoke about the complexity of the issue I was accused of being patronising...

You ask for "some evidence". The The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation (Holden, Greyson, James, eds) lists 65 papers published in peer-reviewed journals, covering a total of 3,500 cases in four continents. More, key research has been produced in the 6 years after the Handbook was published.

What do I do?

Simple: Summarize some of that evidence. Obviously just saying "There is tons and tons and tons of evidence, which I am not going to describe for you" is not going to get this discussion going anywhere.

DrParisetti wrote:And, sorry, oldskeptic, I am afraid you are confusing things. According to forensic medicine, clinical death is pronounced when the EEG is flat, which happens literally within a few seconds from when the hart stops pumping, and indicates absence of electrical activity.

.

Not so, as the reference I have provided you with shows. The EEG in isolation is not acceptable as proof of brain death.

DrParisetti wrote:Dear GrabamH, when I spoke about the complexity of the issue I was accused of being patronising...

You ask for "some evidence". The The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation (Holden, Greyson, James, eds) lists 65 papers published in peer-reviewed journals, covering a total of 3,500 cases in four continents. More, key research has been produced in the 6 years after the Handbook was published.

What do I do?

Here is the issue many of us are having with your position here. You're treating the book as a meta-analysis but that meta analysis itself is not in a peer reviewed journal but a book and it hasn't itself been submitted to peer review. What is also being asked is how does the data look in light of new peer reviewed research which indicated that the consciousness of someone is not an independent function of the brain and it's structure but a dependent and emergent property? Change the structure or function and you change that person's consciousness. Even something as simple as a concussion causes a physical change to the brain which causes one to lose consciousness.

Not to be too harsh but the argument you have put forward smells of selectively choosing data and publishing a book. If the data was so strong, why isn't it in Nature, Science, the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, and so on? Some of us will look through the book but at the same time, you can't put forth an argument at say, I'm correct, read this book, which so happens to be the only comprehensive source pushing for NDE as evidence of the afterlife. You know the data very well I assume so lets take a case from one of those papers, I don't have the book, that's been peer reviewed and used in the book and critique it. I'm sure that wouldn't be too much of a problem.

DrParisetti wrote:And, sorry, oldskeptic, I am afraid you are confusing things. According to forensic medicine, clinical death is pronounced when the EEG is flat, which happens literally within a few seconds from when the hart stops pumping, and indicates absence of electrical activity.

And I'm afraid that you're confusing legally dead with clinically dead. Again, why do I have to explain this to a doctor? Do you even know what an EEG is? They don't strap on the electrodes in the operating room to determine when a person is legally dead. And they don't need them to figure out if someone is clinically dead because they have heart monitors.

You're just building a strawman when you ask how people with no brain activity can remember 'experiences".

Let me insist. Dead or not dead, how do we account for a) any consciousness at all, b) highly structured conscious experiences and c) the formation of long-term memories, when simply there is no brain.

Insist all you want, without a brain there is no consciousness or memories.

I repeat. No "proof" whatsoever, just to get the discussion going. Thanks.

And no evidence either.

DrParisetti wrote:
Let's perhaps try to limit the vast area of discussion, at least by now, by focussing on one area. I see, for example, that there is sympathy here for the the idea that NDEs are accounted for by the fact that the person is not really dead.

Well, I understand that when there is no detectable electrical activity in the brain, a person is considered clinically dead. I also understand that (although this is debatable) no detectable electrical activity may not mean that the brain has shut down completely, and there may be some residual neuronal activity in the brain stem. Do we agree that, dead or not dead, such a status is incompatible with a) the production of consciousness or elements thereof and, especially, b) the onset of a highly structured conscious experience and c) the production of detailed memories which are perfectly conserved?

How do we account for the fact that a, b and c are consistently reported in the absence of detectable electrical activity from the brain? No proof of afterlife, here, just narrowing the discussion a lot and moving on form there.

Looking at Wikipedia on EEG measurements:

The electric potential generated by single neuron is far too small to be picked up by EEG or MEG.[6] EEG activity therefore always reflects the summation of the synchronous activity of thousands or millions of neurons that have similar spatial orientation. If the cells do not have similar spatial orientation, their ions do not line up and create waves to be detected. Pyramidal neurons of the cortex are thought to produce the most EEG signal because they are well-aligned and fire together. Because voltage fields fall off with the square of distance, activity from deep sources is more difficult to detect than currents near the skull.

The tabs which pick up EEG signals are outside the skull; they can only pick up great surges of electrical activity from neurons which happen to be both synchronised and lined up facing the same way, they are very likely to miss thousands of active neurons which are not synchronised or not similarly spatially oriented, or hundreds of pyramidal neurons in spite of their synchronisation. Until there are much more sensitive ways of measuring electrical activity in brains, undetected activity seems to me by far the simplest explanation.

Aw-right, then. No immediate explanations for how a non-functioning brain produces a highly structured conscious experience, remembered in vivid details at 25 or 30 years' distance. I'm sure some will come soon.

Now, we should also consider explanations for the fact that this consciousness appears to be operating from outside the physical body, a fact corroborated by vast anecdotal AND experimental evidence. This data also accounts for the fact that the NDE occurs WHEN the brain is not functioning, and not before or after.

(one little digression: it seems that anecdotes here are considered like utter shite, nonsense, fantasy and akin to child pornography. Were you ever hospitalised? Did you ever give your clinical history to a doctor? That's an anecdote, and your life depends on it. Have you ever given evidence in a court? That's an anecdote, and people can be sentenced to death for it. Anecdotes can be false or wrong, but cannot so easily be discarded.)

And we should consider explanations for the fact this highly structured experience is strikingly similar, independently from age, race, sex, language, historic period and - crucially - religious beliefs.

And we should consider explanations for the fact that children as young as three or four have the same highly structured conscious experience as adults do, with exactly the same key features.

And we should explain that this experience induces the same profound, life-transforming psychological changes in all those who had it, regardless of all the variables mentioned above, and that these changes remain at 10, 15, 20 years from the experience itself.

And we should explain that the congenitally and adventitiously blind actually see during a near-death experience.

And we should explain that one of the key features of the experience is meeting dead relatives, including those who were believed not to be dead at the time of the experience.

I am all ears. I look forward to possible explanations. Please do not give me the old shite about the fear of death, the CO2 levels, the drugs, the low oxygen levels and the temporal lobe stimulation. All that has been done away years ago, and anyway doesn't mean anything when you consider that THE BRAIN IS NOT THERE.

I much less look forward to attempts to ignore, discredit, misinterpret the evidence.

amkerman wrote:This is not a particularly rational forum Dr. Parsetti.

Of course it isn't, because it does't fit your esoteric definition of rational, namely accepting without question the utter bum-custard that passes for thought in kermanworld, namely the existence of imaginary fuckwits.

It is just another atheist forum.

Errr, no. You'll find that a goodly number of our membership consists of theists, and several of them are numbered among our most respected members. Keep making shit up, though. It isn't like this will be a change of behaviour in terms of the ignorant drivel you present.

It is the offshoot of the old Dawkins forum. You will find radical skepticism, dismissal, misrepresentation, and (passive) aggression

Ah, yes, because dismissing the kind of bollocks that comprises your egregious posting history, which amounts to little more than intellectual flatulence, being skeptical of the contents of your bowels, and treating the fucknuttery you present with robust language is 'passve' aggression. Bollocks. You talk shit, be prepared to reap the whirlwind. Thi is the advice you should be giving to those who turn up here talking the kind of utter drivel that has been a feature of your posting history.

Oh, and point to any case of misrepresentation of your failures to think. You point me to them, and I will seek moderator intervention, because that is not allowed under the FUA.

and not much else

Which only tells us that the responses you have received to the utterly idiotic bollocks you have presented is your impression of the entire forum. Perhaps you should go where people don't talk shit and have it rebutted and wander into the areas where we discuss reality. Yes, I know, you're scared of the science fora, because you don't uderstand it all. We'd be happy to help you.

(that is if you offer anything besides a materialistic account of anything).

I defy you to name a single materialist on the forum.

3...2...1... GO!

To be sure, and to be clear, there are exceptions to the rule, but it is the rule.

Then you'll be able to name two. Whenever you're ready.

I just thought I would forewarn you;

No, you thought you'd poison the well, a deeply understood part of the lying supernaturalist aetiology hereabouts.

it's just my opinion,

See that thing that your turds exit from? Everyone's got one of those too, and they all have the same value.

maybe you will have a different experience.

Translation: Concern troll mode engage.

I look forward to reading what you have to say, and asking questions where I can. I have done a good amount of NDE research (on the Internet, that is) and am very interested in the subject.

Excellent! Something that actually pertains to the topic!

So, has any of your research involved dead people?

Edit: Speeloing

DrParisetti wrote:Aw-right, then. No immediate explanations for how a non-functioning brain produces a highly structured conscious experience, remembered in vivid details at 25 or 30 years' distance.

You've yet to demonstrate that it does, that's the problem. Your book is not a peer-reviewed scientific paper.

I'm sure some will come soon.

I'm sure some non-anecdotal evidence will come soon.

Now, we should also consider explanations for the fact that this consciousness appears to be operating from outside the physical body, a fact corroborated by vast anecdotal AND experimental evidence.

I'm all ears. Where is this experimental evidence?

This data also accounts for the fact that the NDE occurs WHEN the brain is not functioning, and not before or after.

Where is "the data"? In your book, which is not a peer-reviewed scientific paper?

(one little digression: it seems that anecdotes here are considered like utter shite, nonsense, fantasy and akin to child pornography.

Child pornography? Where did you get that from? It just isn't very compelling, scientifically.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence: Anecdotal evidence is considered dubious support of a claim; it is accepted only in lieu of more solid evidence.

Were you ever hospitalised? Did you ever give your clinical history to a doctor? That's an anecdote, and your life depends on it. Have you ever given evidence in a court? That's an anecdote, and people can be sentenced to death for it. Anecdotes can be false or wrong, but cannot so easily be discarded.)

The context is important here. Even in a courtroom, an anecdote isn't enough to convict someone on its own. In science, the standard for evidence required to support a claim is higher than it is in a courtroom.

And we should consider explanations for the fact this highly structured experience is strikingly similar, independently from age, race, sex, language, historic period and - crucially - religious beliefs.

Again, you are yet to support the extraordinary claim (experience, sans brain) with extraordinary evidence.

And we should consider explanations for the fact that children as young as three or four have the same highly structured conscious experience as adults do, with exactly the same key features.

And again, this is an assertion supported by your book which has not been subject to peer-review.

And we should explain that this experience induces the same profound, life-transforming psychological changes in all those who had it, regardless of all the variables mentioned above, and that these changes remain at 10, 15, 20 years from the experience itself.

Now, this is a different claim, and a slightly less radical claim. I can believe that powerful experiences, such as amazing visions and hallucinations, could have a powerful effect on someone. That seems plausible at face value.

And we should explain that the congenitally and adventitiously blind actually see during a near-death experience.

Peer-reviewed evidence, please.

And we should explain that one of the key features of the experience is meeting dead relatives, including those who were believed not to be dead at the time of the experience.

Peer-reviewed evidence, please.

I am all ears. I look forward to possible explanations. Please do not give me the old shite about the fear of death, the CO2 levels, the drugs, the low oxygen levels and the temporal lobe stimulation. All that has been done away years ago, and anyway doesn't mean anything when you consider that THE BRAIN IS NOT THERE.

Peer-reviewed evidence, please.

I much less look forward to attempts to ignore, discredit, misinterpret the evidence.

Before anyone can discredit it, you'll have to show some.

Quick question to DrParisetti, do you believe in UFOs, ghosts, ESP, telekinesis,that you're created by aliens who fused two of our chromosomes, and homeopathy? Do you understand why we're asking for peer review?

DrParisetti wrote:
3. At this stage, I am frankly not interested in the philosophical aspects (why survival, what kind of survival) or the admittedly resounding lack of a theory to explain the mechanics of it all.

[/thread]

DrParisetti wrote:Aw-right, then. No immediate explanations for how a non-functioning brain produces a highly structured conscious experience, remembered in vivid details at 25 or 30 years' distance. I'm sure some will come soon.

We look forward to your presentation of it. Meanwhile, if you could address my posts...

Now, we should also consider explanations for the fact that this consciousness appears to be operating from outside the physical body,

Appears to whom?

a fact corroborated by vast anecdotal AND experimental evidence.

Fact?!! Fuck me, but you have to do better. Anecdotal? Not evidence. Experimental? Present it here. Now.

- This data also accounts for the fact that the NDE occurs WHEN the brain is not functioning, and not before or after.

Fact? Citation, please.

(one little digression: it seems that anecdotes here are considered like utter shite, nonsense, fantasy and akin to child pornography. Were you ever hospitalised? Did you ever give your clinical history to a doctor? That's an anecdote, and your life depends on it. Have you ever given evidence in a court? That's an anecdote, and people can be sentenced to death for it. Anecdotes can be false or wrong, but cannot so easily be discarded.)

Well, that was interesting. We all needed an education in what a fucking anecdote is... not!

Present evidence that stands up to critical scrutiny, or admit that you have precisely what every fuckwit who ever bowled up here with a new Earth-shattering thesis concerning bollocks has, namely fuck all. If anecdotes are all you have, you don't have anything. I do understand that, as an MD, your first instinct when somebody trots up with a whacky story is to reach for the sick-note or the prescription pad or both, but we are made of sterner stuff here, and we require that YOU SUPPORT YOUR ASSERTIONS WITH EVIDENCE, something you have singularly failed to do.

I invite you to read the 'Expanding Earth' thread, in the forum that this topic is soon to grace, to see how idiotic bollocks and anecdote are treated in this place.

And we should consider explanations for the fact this highly structured experience is strikingly similar, independently from age, race, sex, language, historic period and - crucially - religious beliefs.

We already have one, and one that relies on evidence, namely the structure of the brain (you should know this or be struck off) and the similarity of experience in other situations. Let me ask you, why is it that there were no tales of alien abduction until recently, and why those tales all follow a similar pattern?

Have you read The Demon-Haunted World?

And we should consider explanations for the fact that children as young as three or four have the same highly structured conscious experience as adults do, with exactly the same key features.

Hmmm, let me see. Children, well known for their powers of imagination, talk about experiences similar to the stories told to them by adults. How does that work, then?

And we should explain that this experience induces the same profound, life-transforming psychological changes in all those who had it, regardless of all the variables mentioned above, and that these changes remain at 10, 15, 20 years from the experience itself.

Because, of course, the human brain isn't capable of re-writing tales.

Listen, I know people who entirely rewrite history. I have known people who tell stories about incidents that I was involved in in which their memories are different from mine. Indeed, I know of incidents in which the stories they tell do not correlate with the tangible evidence that I possess from that time, which demonstrates that their memories are faulty.

Studies have been carried out detailing precisely how utterly useless eyewitness testimony, the engine of anecdote, really is in elucidating events. It has zero utlity.

And we should explain that the congenitally and adventitiously blind actually see during a near-death experience.

No, their brains generate something that appears as sight.

The human brain is a virtual-reality generator par excellence. This is well understood, and I am flabbergasted that an MD would be able to overlook this in studying this subject matter. You have to know this, or you're the most incompetent doctor I ever heard of, and I've heard of doctors whose diagnoses have actually killed people.

There are quite a few medical professionals on this forum, as well as psychologists and other scientists from many disciplines, and I'm fairly sure that most of them would be appalled at the bloody awful, unscientific approach you are demonstrating. This wouldn't be so bad if you presented any evidence, something that has been woefully lacking in your presentation.

And we should explain that one of the key features of the experience is meeting dead relatives, including those who were believed not to be dead at the time of the experience.

Of course, because we aren't predisposed, especially believing this horsehit, to having experiences of dead relatives (or to seeing people who look like living ones).

My brother (only one example of many in my family; there is an interesting history of the males in my immediate family meaning that I have lived well beyond the average at only 43) died at 23 years old. He was 18 months older than me, so I was 21 at the time. After he died, I 'saw' him several times a day, in the walk of somebody else, or the cut of their hair from behind, or the way his shoulder slouched when he was reading. This is a well-understood phenomenon. Combine this with cold-reading, also a very well-understood phenomenon, and a picture begins to form. The most common occasion that this would occur is when somebody is in the throes of grief, and is particularly susceptible to such misperceptions, and you have a great money-making machine. Greiving relative + charlatan = profit.

It isn't like there's even anything remotely mysterious here. People lie, and don't give a flying fuck what means they employ to gain a shilling. It's known in my world as a scam.

I am all ears. I look forward to possible explanations.

Just gave you one, and one that is a fuck of a lot more plausible than your idiotic cockery.

Please do not give me the old shite about the fear of death, the CO2 levels, the drugs, the low oxygen levels and the temporal lobe stimulation. All that has been done away years ago, and anyway doesn't mean anything when you consider that THE BRAIN IS NOT THERE.

Well, you could actually back this up with any studies that have revealed results on people who were dead. The more important question is this: Why have none of the researchers you cite attempted to win the prize offered by the Randi Foundation?

I much less look forward to attempts to ignore, discredit, misinterpret the evidence.

I've ignored fuck all, because you've presented fuck all. Present your evidence and let's go. I am extremely skilled in assessig evidence and its applicability to the claim in question, as are many members here. If you think you have something, convince us, and we'll be behind you. Your reluctance to actually detail the evidence is providing a good deal more information than your posts thus far.

Evidence! Got any?

I must say I'm a touch disappointed. I thought the OP's opinion knowledge about our minds being able to live without our brains was evidence=based but in 3 pages we have yet to see the start of the evidence.

Correct me if I'm wrong but so far the only actual argument for an afterlife seems to be that strange shit happens to people's brains when under stress, oxygen deprivation (or CO2 poisoning) and when shutting down. I don't see how any of that implies an afterlife, let alone makes it as empirically sound as the existence of dinosaurs. I have been to a museum or two, we have really fucking solid evidence for the existence of dinosaurs.

I'm not really interested in the opinions of astronomers, or of any irrelevant profession. You should know how utterly unhelpful that sort of argument by soundbite is. I am interested in solid, peer-reviewed, repeatable, testable evidence, do you have any or is your position rather less convincing?

So far it rather looks like pseudo-scientific wishful thinking to me but I'm very much hoping you will have some evidence to make me change my mind. A convincing argument would be a good start.

bookmarked

DrParisetti wrote:Aw-right, then. No immediate explanations for how a non-functioning brain produces a highly structured conscious experience, remembered in vivid details at 25 or 30 years' distance. I'm sure some will come soon.

You're begging the question here. We have yet to establish that a non-functioning brain does produce such conscious experiences. You've gotten way ahead of yourself. You need to back up and address this issue, first, before you start discussing all the other issues you raise later.

As you say, all ears.

DrParisetti wrote:Aw-right, then. No immediate explanations for how a non-functioning brain produces a highly structured conscious experience, remembered in vivid details at 25 or 30 years' distance. I'm sure some will come soon.

I'm not sure that you are reading the replies very closely. You have conflated clinical death (heart and lungs ceasing to function) with brain death, Doctor. This has been pointed out to you multiple times and you have maintained that these subjects have non functioning brains (are brain dead) when they are actually clinically dead.

One's ability to recall a memory from many years ago is no measure of the acuity or accuracy of the memory itself. It's worth reading up a little on confabulation and false memory syndrome.

(one little digression: it seems that anecdotes here are considered like utter shite, nonsense, fantasy and akin to child pornography. Were you ever hospitalised? Did you ever give your clinical history to a doctor? That's an anecdote, and your life depends on it. Have you ever given evidence in a court? That's an anecdote, and people can be sentenced to death for it. Anecdotes can be false or wrong, but cannot so easily be discarded.)

Eyewitness accounts are part of corroborating evidence. Clinical histories are confirmed with actual medical records, Doctor. Anecdotes can form some part of a body of evidence but presented alone they are insufficient. Sorry.

And we should consider explanations for the fact this highly structured experience is strikingly similar, independently from age, race, sex, language, historic period and - crucially - religious beliefs.

And we should consider explanations for the fact that children as young as three or four have the same highly structured conscious experience as adults do, with exactly the same key features.

You'll find that self reported experiences of the common cold, passing kidney stones, having a headache, making love and being asleep all have strikingly similar features that transcend cultural, ethnic and historical boundaries. Does this lead us to ascribe them with mystical significance? On the contrary, it leads us to think nothing more than human perception of experience at it's core is generally the same.

And we should explain that this experience induces the same profound, life-transforming psychological changes in all those who had it, regardless of all the variables mentioned above, and that these changes remain at 10, 15, 20 years from the experience itself.

I saw these as I was reading your book. Lets paste them in and answer each individually shall we?

DR.Parsetti's book p.27 wrote:

• Increased appreciation for life

The patient nearly died. Having had a reprieve I doubt this psychological change is exclusive to those that report NDEs.

• Increased self-acceptance

Again, the patient nearly died. Having had a reprieve the patient is likely to be contented with just being alive. Again, I doubt this psychological change is exclusive to those that report NDEs.

• Increased compassionate concern for others (in fact, not only for humans but for all other forms
of life)

Having had a brush with death the subjects in question realise that all living things are hanging by a slender thread. Again, I doubt this psychological change is exclusive to those that report NDEs.

• Decreased interest for material goods

Having realised that you can't take those things with you when you die, they eschew worldly possessions. Again, I doubt this psychological change is exclusive to those that report NDEs.

• Decreased competitiveness

Having realised that life is finite and all things die, they find less reason to compete against others. Again, I doubt this psychological change is exclusive to those that report NDEs.

• Increased spirituality (very interestingly, NDErs who were religious before showed a decrease in
their interest for the formal aspects of religion and increased interest for a more universal and
comprehensive spirituality)

Having had a brush with death, their mortality salience is at an all time high. This is well recognised to correlate with increased religiosity. Again, I doubt this psychological change is exclusive to those that report NDEs.

• Increased interest in knowledge for its own sake

• Sense of purpose in life

Having realised that their time on earth is finite, I would imagine a great deal of people tend to refocus their attention from the trivial to the meaningful. Again, I doubt this psychological change is exclusive to those that report NDEs.

• Belief in life after death
• Belief in God or in a superior being, sometimes referred to as “the Light”
• Virtual disappearance of the fear of death

Having had a brush with death, their mortality salience is at an all time high. This is well recognised to correlate with increased religiosity. Again, I doubt this psychological change is exclusive to those that report NDEs.

None of these Psychological changes point to anything more than the ubiquity of human experience when faced with the prospect of their death only to be given a last minute reprieve. It doesn't stretch the mind in the least to think that people who do not have the NDEs you described in your book have a similar reaction to a brush with death. None of this points to an afterlife in the slightest.

And we should explain that the congenitally and adventitiously blind actually see during a near-death experience.

Quite simple really. They aren't actually seeing. They are experiencing a physiological state that is best described as visual imagery. The blindness or sightedness of the patient bares no relevance to whether it's a divine experience or not.

And we should explain that one of the key features of the experience is meeting dead relatives, including those who were believed not to be dead at the time of the experience.

I can conjure the voices and appearances of people I've known, living or dead using my imagination. What's your point?

I am all ears. I look forward to possible explanations. Please do not give me the old shite about the fear of death, the CO2 levels, the drugs, the low oxygen levels and the temporal lobe stimulation. All that has been done away years ago, and anyway doesn't mean anything when you consider that THE BRAIN IS NOT THERE.

Again, Doctor. You are conflating clinical death with brain death in order to better serve your hypothesis. Clinical death is very specific, brain death is much harder to diagnose. The ball is in your court to convince us that upon pulmonary cessation there is no possibility of brain function at all.

As a corrolary, you are going to have to convince us that these experiences occur to the subject while there is no brain function as opposed to when the brain function is decreasing or returning to normal. Your assertion that "THE BRAIN IS NOT THERE" at the time is unfounded.

I refute your out of hand assertion that physiological explanations of NDEs have been debunked. This is the very essence of a scientific experiment. When we look closely at real world phenomena we see multiple variables at work. We learn the interrelation of things by isolating variables and varying others individually. This way we can determine if NDEs are caused by physiological processes or something as of yet unexplained. If the experiences you describe can be induced by recreating the NDE without the possibility of the subject dying, it points directly to a material cause of the experience.

I welcome you to explain why physical causes of these experiences are not sufficient.

Excuse the long post, guys.

amkerman wrote:This is not a particularly rational forum Dr. Parsetti. It is just another atheist forum. It is the offshoot of the old Dawkins forum. You will find radical skepticism, dismissal, misrepresentation, and (passive) aggression, and not much else (that is if you offer anything besides a materialistic account of anything). To be sure, and to be clear, there are exceptions to the rule, but it is the rule.
<snip>

Do you have any evidence of the bolded? It is against the FUA. We can fix it.