Jan Ardena said:
I am not of that opinion.
What evidence would convince you that maybe there we may survive the death of our physical bodies in some subtle form?
Incontrovertable information from "beyond." Information that could only come from someone who "passed;" A measurement of a consciousness transitioning from this existance to the next; a measurement or empirical observation of the "next realm" of existance; etc.
Jan Ardena said:
Do you know what karma is?
Or don't you care and just make it up as you go along?
Strawman argument... I'll skip it.
Jan Ardena said:
It's not a negative necessarily, it just cannot be observed by scientific method.
The scientific method is all that there is to empirically observe or experience reality. Any speculations beyond that are simply fantasy: real only in the minds of those that speculate. If this is something you have little problem believing in and it helps you exist before death, so be it. I maintain, however, that the vast majority of believers in some "continued existance," including yourself, believe as much because they are unwilling to accept the
probability that the observable universe is all that there is or will be for them.
So it was, indeed, a request to prove a negative... that "life after death"
doesn't exist.
Jan Ardena said:
Also your rant heavily implies that you know that when we die, that's it. Absense of evidence is not a good enough explanation to back up such heavy implications. So again I ask; How do you know there is no life after death?
There is absence of evidence for many, many speculations that even you would consider ridiculas. That doesn't mean that any of them are probable in the least. I sincerely
hope that there is some existance beyond what I can observe and measure, but I won't waste one minute of this life
expecting that it be so, and I certainly won't live my days as if I get a better existance if I follow some basic rules that are obviously created by my own species in their attempts to explain the universe at around the time they just figured out how to write.
Jan Ardena said:
Why would such evidence be found in an article entitled "New England Journal of Medicine?"
Where else would such a revelation in human physiology be found? It is one of the premiere journals of its class? If it isn't in
NEJM, then where?
But then we're talking about Near Death Experiences.
The phenomena of NDE and OBE were popularized in the 1970's by Raymond Moody, who wrote
Life After Life, and, subsequently, many people came forward and "corroborated" his accounts. In the 1980's, one of the best corroborations came from a medical doctor named Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who published this account, which I'll excerpt here:
Mrs Schwartz came into the hospital and told us how she had had a near death experience. She was a housewife from Indiana, a very simple and unsophisticated woman. She had advanced cancer, had hemorrhaged and was put into a private hospital, very close to death. The doctors attempted for 45 minutes to revive her, after which she had no vital signs and was declared dead. She told me later that while they were working on her, she had an experience of simply floating out of her physical body and hovering a few feet above the bed, watching the resuscitation team work very frantically. She described to me the designs of the doctors' ties, she repeated a joke one of the young doctors told, she remembered absolutely everything. And all she wanted to tell them was relax, take it easy, it is all right, don't struggle so hard. The more she tried to tell them, the more frantically they worked to revive her. Then, in her own language, she "gave up" on them and lost consciousness. Afdter they declared her dead, she made a comeback and lived for another year and a half. (Kübler-Ross, 1981, p. 86)
Kübler-Ross' account of the patient's NDE is typical and has several typical and expected characteristics:
- a floating OBE in which you look down and see your body.
- passing through a tunnel or spiral chamber toward a bright light that represents transcendence to the "other side."
- and, emerging on the other side and seeing loved ones who have already passed away or a godlike figure.
(Shermer, 1997)
Kübler-Ross goes into great detail in the article (which is in a 1981 issue of
Playboy!), describing corroborating evidence from other NDE's from accident victims who can describe the scenes of rescue or of people who have been disfigured becoming whole again, etc.
But none of this creates any thing more than speculation about the nature of NDE or OBE as phenomena that are more than side effects of normal brain activity. Trauma and surgery patients are probably not totally unconscious or under anesthesia (there are different levels of anesthesia, since there are different responses the body is capable of during surgery at different levels that are needed) and it is a good bet that they are
overhearing the entire process on some level of consciousness. Then the memories are supplanted by visualizations the brain creates... our brains are quite good at this after all.
Another early speculation about NDE and OBE comes from Stanislav Grof (1976; and 1977), who argued that every human being has already experienced the characteristics of NDE, the sensation of floating, the passage down a tunnel, the emergence into a bright light: birth. This memory, he suggested, could be imprinted in the infant's mind and triggered by later, equally traumatic events, such as death. Admittedly, there are a lot of holes in Grof's work, especially since babies are typically born with their eyes closed and don't
see the birth cannal... and, Grof's subjects were experimenting with LSD, which creates its own hallucinations rather than drawing on memories.
Biochemical and neurophysiological causes are the most likely causes of NDE and OBE. Certain alkaloids like belladonna can trigger hallucinations of flying, and, indeed, this is where we get the legend of the "flying broom" of witches. Medieval witches coated their brooms with belladonna and "flew" them in the buff, allowing the belladonna to be absorbed into the vaginal lips (Sergeant, 1936, p. 41). Other drugs, like DMT can create the perception that the world is enlarging or shrinking, MDA stimulates a feeling of age-repression, LSD triggers visual and audio hallucinations, etc.
At first, one might argue that those who experience NDE haven't been demonstrated to have taken any of these drugs, but then one has to consider that these are
man-made or introduced drugs, and yet there are receptors within the brain for them. Therefore, there must be natural equivalents that are produced by the body under certain circumstances. Perhaps NDE and OBE are as easily explained as
natural trips induced by traumatic event (i.e. death).
Add to this the notion that most people in Western society have been exposed to the Judeo-Christian idea of heaven and god. The mind has a way of filling in the gaps when it goes into hallucination.
NDE cannot be cited as any sort of evidence for a "continuation of existance."
References:
Grof, Stanislav (1976). Realms of the Human Unconscious. New York: Dutton
Grof, Stanislav and Halifax, J. (1977) The Human Encounter with Death. New York: Dutton.
Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth (1981). Playboy Interview: Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. Playboy.
Sergeant, Philip (1936) Witches and Warlocks. London: Hutchinson & Co.
Shermer, Michael (1997).Why People Believe Weird Things. New York: MJF Books.
