Atheists OBEs and NDEs

[HonestJoe]

Belief systems are individual.

So why did your OP asked about atheists in general?

 

[leroy]

^^^ THIS ^^^
​

Its a known phenomenon the brain under stress, it is nothing to do with religion

Because all of the reported experiences can be explained by a brain that is starved of oxygen, and the chemical imbalances as it is shutting down. And the "light at the end of the tunnel" is most likely an extreme form of the tunnel vision you can get when you stand up suddenly and blood rushes out of your head for a moment.

It's like the people who say, "I took LSD and had a crazy experience and so now I believe in god." There's really, really a more simple explanation...

We are tanking about experiences where:

1 the man observes himself out of the body

2 Observes the room and suff around

3 Provides a description of hte stuff that he saw

4 The description happened to be accurate

You can’t explain this with “brain stuff” or LSD.

This is good testable stuff, if the man who was unconscious accurately describes the stuff that he claimed to have seen then, it was a real OBE and strong evidence for a supernatural event

 

[ChristineM]

.

This is good testable stuff, if the man who was unconscious accurately describes the stuff that he claimed to have seen then, it was a real OBE and strong evidence for a supernatural event

No it's not, it is a known phenomenon that even unconscious or in coma impressions of surroundings can be registered and interpreted by the brain.

Example, my father was mugged and had his skull shattered, leaving him in a coma for over a month during which time he died 3 times and was resuscitated. After his recovery he described much of his surroundings and described to me what i was wearing each time i visited. No supernatural woo, just the brain being more aware of its environment than is typically assumed

 

[blü 2]

why would an atheist have an obe and/or nde and doesn't believe in non-local consciousness?

Who Have More Out-of-Body Near-Death Experiences—Atheists, Catholics, or Muslims?

Because it's a phenomenon generated in the brain under abnormal circumstances, and has nothing to do with your beliefs and understandings, perhaps?

 

[leroy]

No it's not, it is a known phenomenon that even unconscious or in coma impressions of surroundings can be registered and interpreted by the brain.

Example, my father was mugged and had his skull shattered, leaving him in a coma for over a month during which time he died 3 times and was resuscitated. After his recovery he described much of his surroundings and described to me what i was wearing each time i visited. No supernatural woo, just the brain being more aware of its environment than is typically assumed

Well it has to be analized on a case by case bases, for example if your fathers eyes where closed then obviously he could have not seen your clothes with his eyes, so an accurate description of what you where wearing would have been a supernatural event.

 

[ChristineM]

Well it has to be analized on a case by case bases, for example if your fathers eyes where closed then obviously he could have not seen your clothes with his eyes, so an accurate description of what you where wearing would have been a supernatural event.

Yes a case by case basis and medical science has never found any indication of the supernatural that could be born out by research or evidence. On the contrary, MRI scans taken at the time have shown the cause to be the activity of a stressed, physical, brain.

Or perhaps his eyes momentarily opened, muscle reflex and let an image of his surroundings record on his retina. You know, real life actions as opposed to wishful thinking.

Of course you may believe whatever you want.

 

[leroy]

Yes a case by case basis and medical science has never found any indication of the supernatural that could be born out by research or evidence. On the contrary, MRI scans taken at the time have shown the cause to be the activity of a stressed, physical, brain.

Or perhaps his eyes momentarily opened, muscle reflex and let an image of his surroundings record on his retina. You know, real life actions as opposed to wishful thinking.

Of course you may believe whatever you want.

Ok but my point is that OBEs are testable in principle.....agree?...... one can test if your father under his conditions could have seen you or not.

 

[ChristineM]

Ok but my point is that OBEs are testable in principle.....agree?...... one can test if your father under his conditions could have seen you or not.

Supernatural is not testable and and claimed supernatural obe can more easily be explained by natural phenomena, thich was the point.

How could one test what happened 15 years ago. It is a fact that under coma conditions your muscles can and do sometimes move. Eyelids flutter etc. Thats all it needs.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

something observing itself apart from the body doesn't have a brain. Obes are able to observe something both visually audibly and not through the physical eyes and ears. Ndes and obes are claiming consciousness of things that are not through the physical 5 senses

Why would you ever assume that a dying brain is reliable?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

We are tanking about experiences where:

1 the man observes himself out of the body

2 Observes the room and suff around

3 Provides a description of hte stuff that he saw

4 The description happened to be accurate

You can’t explain this with “brain stuff” or LSD.

This is good testable stuff, if the man who was unconscious accurately describes the stuff that he claimed to have seen then, it was a real OBE and strong evidence for a supernatural event

Can you point to a single case where #4 was actually demonstrated?

 

[leroy]

Can you point to a single case where #4 was actually demonstrated?

A case of a man who was in deep coma, who accurately described the doctors and nurses that treat him, the medical procedures, the room and most impresive of all he described how his dentures where removed, and placed in a kart, he described the kart accurately and the denture was exactly there when he woke up.
Source and complete testimony
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11601344_Near-Death_Experience_in_Survivors_of_Cardiac_Arrest_A_Prospective_Study_in_the_Netherlands/link/5880ad0ba6fdcc0848f8f15c/download
During a night shift an ambulance brings in a 44-year-old cyanotic, comatose man into the coronary care unit. He had been found about an hour before in a meadow by passers-by. After admission, he receives artificial respiration without intubation, while heart massage and defibrillation are also applied. When we want to intubate the patient, he turns out to have dentures in his mouth. I remove these upper dentures and put them onto the 'crash car'. Meanwhile, we continue extensive CPR. After about an hour and a half the patient has sufficient heart rhythm and blood pressure, but he is still ventilated and intubated, and he is still comatose. He is transferred to the intensive care unit to continue the necessary artificial respiration. Only after more than a week do I meet again with the patient, who is by now back on the cardiac ward. I distribute his medication. The moment he sees me he says: 'Oh, that nurse knows where my dentures are'. I am very surprised. Then he elucidates: 'Yes, you were there when I was brought into hospital and you took my dentures out of my mouth and put them onto that car, it had all these bottles on it and there was this sliding drawer underneath and there you put my teeth.' I was especially amazed because I remembered this happening while the man was in deep coma and in the process of CPR. When I asked further, it appeared the man had seen himself lying in bed, that he had perceived from above how nurses and doctors had been busy with CPR. He was also able to describe correctly and in detail the small room in which he had been resuscitated as well as the appearance of those present like myself. At the time that he observed the situation he had been very much afraid that we would stop CPR and that he would die. And it is true that we had been very negative about the patient's prognosis due to his very poor medical condition when admitted. The patient tells me that he desperately and unsuccessfully tried to make it clear to us that he was still alive and that we should continue CPR. He is deeply impressed by his experience and says he is no longer afraid of death. 4 weeks later he left hospital as a healthy man."

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

A case of a man who was in deep coma, who accurately described the doctors and nurses that treat him, the medical procedures, the room and most impresive of all he described how his dentures where removed, and placed in a kart, he described the kart accurately and the denture was exactly there when he woke up.
Source and complete testimony
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11601344_Near-Death_Experience_in_Survivors_of_Cardiac_Arrest_A_Prospective_Study_in_the_Netherlands/link/5880ad0ba6fdcc0848f8f15c/download
During a night shift an ambulance brings in a 44-year-old cyanotic, comatose man into the coronary care unit. He had been found about an hour before in a meadow by passers-by. After admission, he receives artificial respiration without intubation, while heart massage and defibrillation are also applied. When we want to intubate the patient, he turns out to have dentures in his mouth. I remove these upper dentures and put them onto the 'crash car'. Meanwhile, we continue extensive CPR. After about an hour and a half the patient has sufficient heart rhythm and blood pressure, but he is still ventilated and intubated, and he is still comatose. He is transferred to the intensive care unit to continue the necessary artificial respiration. Only after more than a week do I meet again with the patient, who is by now back on the cardiac ward. I distribute his medication. The moment he sees me he says: 'Oh, that nurse knows where my dentures are'. I am very surprised. Then he elucidates: 'Yes, you were there when I was brought into hospital and you took my dentures out of my mouth and put them onto that car, it had all these bottles on it and there was this sliding drawer underneath and there you put my teeth.' I was especially amazed because I remembered this happening while the man was in deep coma and in the process of CPR. When I asked further, it appeared the man had seen himself lying in bed, that he had perceived from above how nurses and doctors had been busy with CPR. He was also able to describe correctly and in detail the small room in which he had been resuscitated as well as the appearance of those present like myself. At the time that he observed the situation he had been very much afraid that we would stop CPR and that he would die. And it is true that we had been very negative about the patient's prognosis due to his very poor medical condition when admitted. The patient tells me that he desperately and unsuccessfully tried to make it clear to us that he was still alive and that we should continue CPR. He is deeply impressed by his experience and says he is no longer afraid of death. 4 weeks later he left hospital as a healthy man."

You do realize that this was just an anecdote in the introduction? It doesn't seem to be part of the rigorous research.

That aside: what part of this satisfies #4? What part do you think requires what the patient said to be drawn by his NDE and not, say, a bit of prior knowledge about how hospitals generally work?

BTW: after the patient woke up, how long do you think it took before the interviews happened that informed that account? How long was the patient watching and listening to his ward - and incorporating details of what he heard and saw into his memory of the event - before he told his story? Do you think he had any opportunity to overhear the nurse (or someone else watching) talking to her coworkers about what happened?

 

[leroy]

You do realize that this was just an anecdote in the introduction? It doesn't seem to be part of the rigorous research.

Well the author present it as an actual case, a random unsupported anecdote would have nor passed the peer review process. .....

You usually accept what peer reviewed papers say, unless you have a good positive reason to doubt, including the parts that are not part of the rigorous research.....so why making arbitrary exception here?

That aside: what part of this satisfies #4? What part do you think requires what the patient said to be drawn by his NDE and not, say, a bit of prior knowledge about how hospitals generally work?

He described the location of his dentures he described the kart in which his dentures where placed...... there is no "standard procedure" for what to do with dentures, and the teeth happened to be there ..... thus testimony if real fullfiles points 1,2 3 and 4

BTW: after the patient woke up, how long do you think it took before the interviews happened that informed that account? How long was the patient watching and listening to his ward - and incorporating details of what he heard and saw into his memory of the event - before he told his story? Do you think he had any opportunity to overhear the nurse (or someone else watching) talking to her coworkers about what happened?

And how do you know that tiktaalik is an authentic fossil and not a fraud? ...... sure I am not 100% sure that is was a real OBE and sure there are other alternatives..... but the same is true with everything else like the theory of evolution... any fossil, any DNA test, any anatomical comparison, any phylogenetic match etc could have been a mistake, a fraud, or a lie ..... so my point is that if your standards is 100% certainty you should reject most scientific facts and theories.


What alternative do you suggest
1 was this man a lier?
2 wherd the nurse and the doctors lying just to promote the story ?
3 is the author of the paper lying ?
4 was the man just hallucinating?
5 something else?

What alternative do you suggest and why is that alternative better than "OBE"?


BTW
I am not saying that this type of testimonies prove OBEs beyond reasonable doubt, all i am suggesting is That they count as evidence and that they strongly increase the probability of these events being real..... agree?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Well the author present it as an actual case, a random unsupported anecdote would have nor passed the peer review process. .....

He presented it as a bit of colour in the introduction to the paper. Why do you think that this aspect of the paper would have been a major focus of peer review?

Even better question: if the author of the paper thought that this story was decent evidence that OBEs and NDEs were real, why wasn't the paper entitled something like "HOLY CRAP - I CAN SHOW THAT OUR MINDS CAN WORK WITHOUT BRAIN ACTIVITY!!! NOBEL PRIZE, PLEASE!"?

You usually accept what peer reviewed papers say, unless you have a good positive reason to doubt, including the parts that are not part of the rigorous research.....so why making arbitrary exception here?

What exception? I'm taking it as given that every factual claim in the paper by the authors is true: none of their data is fabricated and the nurse really did say what she was quoted as saying.

Your personal inferences about these factual claims haven't been peer reviewed.

He described the location of his dentures he described the kart in which his dentures where placed...... there is no "standard procedure" for what to do with dentures, and the teeth happened to be there ..... thus testimony if real fullfiles points 1,2 3 and 4

Have you ever been in a hospital? Most of the places where dentures might be placed are a cart of some sort.

And there's no indication in the story that the patient didn't have the opportunity to learn where his dentures were in a normal way (e.g. as he's partway toward regaining consciousness, he happens to overhear one nurse saying to another "oh - the dentures for the patient in bed 4 are in this cart over here").

And how do you know that tiktaalik is an authentic fossil and not a fraud? ...... sure I am not 100% sure that is was a real OBE and sure there are other alternatives..... but the same is true with everything else like the theory of evolution... any fossil, any DNA test, any anatomical comparison, any phylogenetic match etc could have been a mistake, a fraud, or a lie ..... so my point is that if your standards is 100% certainty you should reject most scientific facts and theories.

My standard isn't 100% certainty. It's just higher than "an anonymous patient told this unverifiable story to a cardiology nurse who told a cardiology researcher who happened to be in the unit."

What alternative do you suggest
1 was this man a lier?
2 wherd the nurse and the doctors lying just to promote the story ?
3 is the author of the paper lying ?
4 was the man just hallucinating?
5 something else?

While I can't - and you can't either - rule out actual fraud, I think the most likely explanation is that they're sincere but mistaken.

With any sort of witness account, there's the potential for events to be misremembered or for our memories to change over time, or to be influenced by the stories of others.

With these accounts, you have the added wrinkle that the account is from someone under extreme physiological and mental stress to the literal point of death. Only a fool would assume that they had the presence of mind while clinically dead to form an accurate memory of what was going on.

What possible reason could you have to assume that when someone says that an event feels like it happened when they had no brain activity, the memory wasn't actually formed later, once they regained brain activity but before they had a chance to be interviewed by some researcher?

What alternative do you suggest and why is that alternative better than "OBE"?

My alternative is this:

- dying brains aren't reliable

Do you need anything more?

BTW
I am not saying that this type of testimonies prove OBEs beyond reasonable doubt, all i am suggesting is That they count as evidence and that they strongly increase the probability of these events being real..... agree?

I think anecdotes, especially hearsay anedcotes, are ridiculously poor quality evidence, almost to the point of being worthless.

... and that would be if we had all the important questions answered like "did anyone talk to the patient before they were interviewed?"

You're hanging a lot of weight on an anecdote thrown into a psychology paper by a cardiologist. Look and see what relevant experts in the field are finding... e.g. neurologists. If you can't find anything from them that supports your preconceived view, ask yourself why.

 

[leroy]

He presented it as a bit of colour in the introduction to the paper. Why do you think that this aspect of the paper would have been a major focus of peer review?

Even better question: if the author of the paper thought that this story was decent evidence that OBEs and NDEs were real, why wasn't the paper entitled something like "HOLY CRAP - I CAN SHOW THAT OUR MINDS CAN WORK WITHOUT BRAIN ACTIVITY!!! NOBEL PRIZE, PLEASE!"?


What exception? I'm taking it as given that every factual claim in the paper by the authors is true: none of their data is fabricated and the nurse really did say what she was quoted as saying.

Well I think you are making a lot of assumptions about the author, his knowledge and his data, why don´t you provide the standard before, and then I provide the evidence?


If you think about it, nobody is making an extraordinary claim

1 a man had a hard attack and a comma

2 a man had a vision of a nurse placing the dentures is a kart

3 the dentures where in that specific kart.

None of the claims is extraordinary, I understand that the combination of 1,2 and 3 is extraordinary, but none of the individual claims is extraordinary.


But I ´ll give you the opportunity to provide your standards,

Which of these 3 claims do you think is wrong, and what evidence would convince to the contrary?

Have you ever been in a hospital? Most of the places where dentures might be placed are a cart of some sort.

I would like to see evidence for that

No I personally had no idea what hospitals do with dentures, and neither does the average man.

So why assuming that this man had special and unusual knowledge about that? and even more important, if this is standard and known procedure why was anyone impressed by that knowledge?

If we would have reported that the hospital had “white walls” nobody would have been impressed

And there's no indication in the story that the patient didn't have the opportunity to learn where his dentures were in a normal way (e.g. as he's partway toward regaining consciousness, he happens to overhear one nurse saying to another "oh - the dentures for the patient in bed 4 are in this cart over here").

Yes , with that level of skepticism anyone can trump any evidence for anything

My standard isn't 100% certainty. It's just higher than "an anonymous patient told this unverifiable story to a cardiology nurse who told a cardiology researcher who happened to be in the unit."

I think anecdotes, especially hearsay anedcotes, are ridiculously poor quality evidence, almost to the point of being worthless.

Well obviously the point is that this is just an example of hundredths of similar stories that have been reported ……… so sure a single story doesn’t prove much, but why do we see so many similar cases?

Well apart from anecdotes, what else do you expect to find if OBEs where real?

What possible reason could you have to assume that when someone says that an event feels like it happened when they had no brain activity, the memory wasn't actually formed later,

Well I don’t understand the question, but the memory was real, the dentures where really there, so it´s not a case of a “false memory” being inserted somehow

You're hanging a lot of weight on an anecdote thrown into a psychology paper by a cardiologist. Look and see what relevant experts in the field are finding... e.g. neurologists. If you can't find anything from them that supports your preconceived view, ask yourself why.

Well relevant experts can’t explain this type of events.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Well I think you are making a lot of assumptions about the author, his knowledge and his data, why don´t you provide the standard before, and then I provide the evidence?

If OBEs involved people actually able to think and perceive without brain function, then the most obvious way to test this would be to test them before brain function has returned.

IOW, take someone who's clinically dead and interview them while they're dead. To be sure, do this with the test subject in an MRI so you can confirm that there really isn't any brain activity.

I would like to see evidence for that

Evidence that hospitals have lots of carts? Just go to your local hospital and look.

No I personally had no idea what hospitals do with dentures, and neither does the average man.

Someone who has dentures is more likely to know than the average person.

Maybe he assumed they were in the same place the nurse put them on his last visit to the hospital. Your account says nothing about how often that patient had been in hospital before, but considering they told us that it was someone with dentures who was a patient in a cardiac ward, odds are that this was not his first visit to a hospital.

So why assuming that this man had special and unusual knowledge about that? and even more important, if this is standard and known procedure why was anyone impressed by that knowledge?

As far as I can tell, the only person that's impressed by this "knowledge" is you. The paper presents the story as consistent with a vivid, detailed imagining on the part of the patient. There's nothing in the paper that even suggests that the researchers think that his soul left his body, floated around the room observing things, and popped back into his body. The paper is all about the long-term effects of a psychological phenomenon.

If we would have reported that the hospital had “white walls” nobody would have been impressed

Now you're getting it.

The author told us that the nurse said the patient identified the correct drawer where his dentures were. What do you think the odds would have been of that happening? A couple of givens:

- presumably, he could look around his room and see that his dentures weren't out in plain sight.

- it would have been reasonable for him to assume that the nurses wouldn't have put the dentures somewhere far away.

How many drawers do you think there are in a normal hospital room? 10? 20? You're making a lot out of something where he would have had a decent chance of getting the right answer just with a random guess.

Yes , with that level of skepticism anyone can trump any evidence for anything

No, I can only trump crappy evidence.

Here's how it works: before jumping to extraordinary explanations, rule out mundane explanations. You haven't done this.

Until you can give reasonable, defensible answers to some basic questions like "how do you know it wasn't a lucky guess?" and "how do you know he didn't find this stuff out some other way?", you have no business jumping to "his invisible ghost must have been floating around the room while he was dead."

Well obviously the point is that this is just an example of hundredths of similar stories that have been reported ……… so sure a single story doesn’t prove much, but why do we see so many similar cases?

Depends what you mean by "similar". Humans share a physiology, so oxygen-starved brains tend to fail in similar ways.

That being said, you don't really have "hundreds of similar stories." You brought this one story up because it was the best one you could find to make your argument for why OBEs come from real invisible souls or whatnot flying around... right?

IOW, even though this story is utter crap as far as evidence goes, any other accounts you have are even worse evidence.

Well apart from anecdotes, what else do you expect to find if OBEs where real?

Just to clarify something: OBE refers to the experience. OBEs are real; they just have physiological causes. You're arguing that OBEs have some other cause.

As for what else we could expect to find, that depends on the exact mechanism. If thought doesn't require brain activity, and if the seat of our consciousness isn't even a physical part of our bodies, then OBEs may be one of the least interesting implications to come out of this.

Well I don’t understand the question, but the memory was real, the dentures where really there, so it´s not a case of a “false memory” being inserted somehow

Maybe educate yourself a bit about the unreliability of memory. Here's one source, but a quick Googling can find you many others if you don't like this one:

Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Biases | Noba

Well relevant experts can’t explain this type of events.

Bingo: the people most familiar with the "evidence" you want to use to support your conclusion can't support your conclusion with it.