Near Death experiences and the scientific method.

[George-ananda]

And you've shown us that your attachment to NDE made you judge the scientific explanation as something that you want it to be instead of doing actual research about the explanation.

No, I was giving my opinion on the likelihood for the 'explain-aways' being correct explanations for all these Veridical NDEs. After a time I feel the attempts are desperate attempts to hold a materialist worldview in place.

And there lies the problem. You made a conclusion based on quantity and consistency of events that you had no explanation for. This is a flawed epistemological method to knowing what is actually happening and/or how it is happening.

All I am saying is that we have events not satisfactorily explainable by known science.

The quantity of stories does not make them evidence. If material explanations can be invented for them, but no immaterial explanation can be invented as a rebuttal to those explanations, then that says a lot about your conclusion for the stories.

Keep in mind that I did say, explanation as to why the material explanations of the events are wrong, and not simply an explanation of why you dismissed them, ie "it's a desperate attempt by materialist to dismiss NDE."

My judgement on the body of the more compelling Veridical NDE cases is that we are indeed dealing with a phenomena not understood by current science.

Perhaps science can go no further at this time but hopefully future technology may tell us more. In the meantime my personal views consider spiritual wisdom traditions (Vedic (Hindu), Theosophical) that can not be proved nor disproved by current science.

 

[tas8831]

Ok so what do you need to see, for it to be convincing enough?

What evidence would you accept for NDE…………. As far as I know this is a “new” area of research so it is a good time to make predictions and see what happens in the near future.

I don't really care enough about it put much thought into it. It was more interesting to me when I learned decades ago that astronauts and fighter pilots in G-training often experienced exactly what the people claiming NDEs did.

 

[tas8831]

The claim is that people who experience NDEs describe accursedly stuff from the real world, things like the could have not known before the “coma”………things like the color of the t-shirt of the patient that was in the next room.

If these r} testimonies are real, you can’t explain them with neuroscience……..agree?

Show that they are real.

 

[night912]

No, I was giving my opinion on the likelihood for the 'explain-aways' being correct explanations for all these Veridical NDEs. After a time I feel the attempts are desperate attempts to hold a materialist worldview in place.

On the basis of your attachment to NDE and/or an immaterial explanation, and not on it being plausible based on the analysis of experts in that field.

All I am saying is that we have events not satisfactorily explainable by known science.

Based on what assessment?

My judgement on the body of the more compelling Veridical NDE cases is that we are indeed dealing with a phenomena not understood by current science.

Again, based on what assessment?

Perhaps science can go no further at this time but hopefully future technology may tell us more. In the meantime my personal views consider spiritual wisdom traditions (Vedic (Hindu), Theosophical) that can not be proved nor disproved by current science.

How did you connect that with the stories?

 

[leroy]

Correct me if I'm wrong... but it sounds to me like what you are about the "investigate", are just anecdotes that you can't actually verify and will be required to "just believe" whatever is said?

Correct me if I'm wrong... but it sounds to me like what you are about the "investigate", are just anecdotes that you can't actually verify and will be required to "just believe" whatever is said?

In other contexts Anecdotes are verifiable, one can verify if a testimony is likely to be true or just lies or hallucinations. So why not using the same approach with NDE?

Its a fact that testimonies from people who claim to have had NDE exist.

And there are only 3 possible explanations for this fact.

1 the testimonies are lies

2 people had hallucinations that were wrongly interpreted as “out of body experiences”

3 the NDE are true and the out of body experiences where real

If there is a forth option please share it.

So my claim is 1 2 and 3 are testable and falsifiable, (at least to some degree) so lets see the testimonies on a case by case basis and see if “option 3” remains as the best explanation in any testimony,….

Is there anything wrong with this approach? Would you add something else.

 

[leroy]

What is there to refute? They are just bare claims.
What is asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.

You are expected to refute the claims made in the research papers that where quoted earlier.

 

[leroy]

The first question would be what exactly are you trying to test for? We know the experiences are real because people experience them. The key question is what causes them (which can, and in this case probably does, have multiple answers).

The specific kind of test you're describing (which some people have been trying to do already) would only answer part of the question. The ability of some patients accurately describe things around them at a time they were believed to be unconscious doesn't prove anything in itself, since there are multiple means by which they could come about that information (especially if you're allowing for as yet unknown phenomena).

Describing things around them is not that surprising, (unless there is certainty that the eyes where always closed) …….. the surprising thing is that they report stuff that occurred far far away, (like things happening at their mothers house)

A more meaningful approach would require a hypothesis for exactly what actually causes these experiences

The “what” question can be left out for future inquiry…. We can in principle establish that NDE occur, even if we don’t know what causes them

 

[leroy]

Ah, so you think NDEs are dreams. Interesting.

No,

I said that at least in principle NDE can either be dreams or real NDE (with real our of body experiences) ….. if you ever experience something that feels like a NDE you must be open to both possibilities.

Further tests could revel which of the 2 was it………

That is my point…. Any disagreement?

 

[George-ananda]

On the basis of your attachment to NDE and/or an immaterial explanation, and not on it being plausible based on the analysis of experts in that field.

Are you trying to say the experts in the field have a conclusion on what is going on? Most of those that study NDEs can not explain them.

Based on what assessment?


Again, based on what assessment?


How did you connect that with the stories?

After enough stories about people knowing detailed information that couldn't reasonably have been known through known channels of information I believe we likely are dealing with a phenomena well beyond known science.

Here's just one more of the many that have been documented in the NDE literature.

For instance, in a case reported on by hospice physician John Lerma, an 82-year-old man had an NDE in which he floated out of his body in the hospital trauma room. From a position up above the goings-on there, he saw a quarter sitting on the right-hand corner of the eight-foot-high cardiac monitor, a quarter dating from the year 1985. After he was resuscitated, he asked Lerma to go and check whether the quarter was really there, so he could know whether his very affecting spiritual experience was real. Lerma took a ladder and climbed up to look, and there indeed was the 1985 quarter, just as the patient had seen it.


I can go on and on with more stories. How many people do I have to believe are either lying or mistaken about straightforward things like this to keep the materialist view? The materialist explain-away for all these cases just becomes well-nigh impossible to my common sense.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

You are expected to refute the claims made in the research papers that where quoted earlier.

What papers? Must have missed that.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

In other contexts Anecdotes are verifiable

Which isn't relevant to this context so I don't know why you bring that up.

, one can verify if a testimony is likely to be true or just lies or hallucinations. So why not using the same approach with NDE?

How would you do that?

Its a fact that testimonies from people who claim to have had NDE exist.

It's also a fact that testimonies exist from people who claim to have been abducted by aliens, have seen bigfoot, etc.

Nobody denies this.

And there are only 3 possible explanations for this fact.

1 the testimonies are lies

2 people had hallucinations that were wrongly interpreted as “out of body experiences”

3 the NDE are true and the out of body experiences where real

4. they are just honestly mistaken

5. other explanations you can't come up with at this point

If there is a forth option please share it.

I even gave you a fifth.

So my claim is 1 2 and 3 are testable and falsifiable

How?
Don't just claim it. Explain it.
How do you propose those can be tested and falsified?

, (at least to some degree) so lets see the testimonies on a case by case basis and see if “option 3” remains as the best explanation in any testimony,….

Is there anything wrong with this approach?

Yes. It's not an approach. You haven't clarified anything. You just repeated your claims.
I don't see how anything you said means that it's not just a matter of believing whatever people say.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Further tests could revel which of the 2 was it………

What tests?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Most of those that study NDEs can not explain them.

Let's go with that.
If even the experts in the field that actually study it, can't explain it..............

Isn't then the only proper thing to say here, that it is unknown?

After enough stories about people knowing detailed information that couldn't reasonably have been known through known channels of information I believe we likely are dealing with a phenomena well beyond known science.

Here's just one more of the many that have been documented in the NDE literature.

For instance, in a case reported on by hospice physician John Lerma, an 82-year-old man had an NDE in which he floated out of his body in the hospital trauma room. From a position up above the goings-on there, he saw a quarter sitting on the right-hand corner of the eight-foot-high cardiac monitor, a quarter dating from the year 1985. After he was resuscitated, he asked Lerma to go and check whether the quarter was really there, so he could know whether his very affecting spiritual experience was real. Lerma took a ladder and climbed up to look, and there indeed was the 1985 quarter, just as the patient had seen it.

You have a really low standard as to what constitutes "documented".
All I see here, are anecdotal third hand claims.

I can go on and on with more stories

I can tell you hundreds of stories of alien abductees as well.

How many people do I have to believe are either lying or mistaken about straightforward things like this to keep the materialist view? The materialist explain-away for all these cases just becomes well-nigh impossible to my common sense.

So I guess that means that you believe that bigfoot exists and that roswell-style grey aliens are abducting people and performing weird sex experiments on them?

After all.... how many people do you have to believe are either lying or mistaking about straightforward things like this to believe otherwise, right?


Or is there perhaps more going on? Like some type of confirmation bias maybe?

 

[HonestJoe]

Describing things around them is not that surprising, (unless there is certainty that the eyes where always closed) …….. the surprising thing is that they report stuff that occurred far far away, (like things happening at their mothers house)

I think you're getting in to distinctly different phenomena then, with potentially different causes. In general I think terms like NDE are too unspecific and varied in interpretation by different people for anyone to just say they're researching NDEs. To approach this scientifically, you need to define the concepts in scientific terms.

The “what” question can be left out for future inquiry…. We can in principle establish that NDE occur, even if we don’t know what causes them

Potentially yes but again, if you want to research whether a particular phenomena actually occurs, you would need to define it in sufficient detail.

 

[night912]

Are you trying to say the experts in the field have a conclusion on what is going on? Most of those that study NDEs can not explain them.

Exactly. That's why it should remain as unexplained/unknown until there's enough data to know and understand what is happening. We shouldn't just go with the conclusion of non-experts.

After enough stories about people knowing detailed information that couldn't reasonably have been known through known channels of information I believe we likely are dealing with a phenomena well beyond known science.

Exactly, that's why we shouldn't make a conclusion about something we don't know.

Here's just one more of the many that have been documented in the NDE literature.

For instance, in a case reported on by hospice physician John Lerma, an 82-year-old man had an NDE in which he floated out of his body in the hospital trauma room. From a position up above the goings-on there, he saw a quarter sitting on the right-hand corner of the eight-foot-high cardiac monitor, a quarter dating from the year 1985. After he was resuscitated, he asked Lerma to go and check whether the quarter was really there, so he could know whether his very affecting spiritual experience was real. Lerma took a ladder and climbed up to look, and there indeed was the 1985 quarter, just as the patient had seen it.


I can go on and on with more stories. How many people do I have to believe are either lying or mistaken about straightforward things like this to keep the materialist view? The materialist explain-away for all these cases just becomes well-nigh impossible to my common sense.

But the thing is, are the stories true and accurate? Doing investigation and finding stories are easy. What's difficult is doing investigation on the stories to see if they are accurate and not exaggerated.

And here's something that has been given as a testimony:

Yes, during my internship year I was working in the emergency room when a multiple casualties of a collision entered as well as an elderly gentleman having a heart attack. Since all doctors were busy with patients, I cared for the elderly gentleman who had a better chance of survival. He eventually had a cardiac arrest which I was able to bring him out of and during that time he began to speak of the light, God, his life review and so forth. I felt it was hallucinatory but days later after his admission, he said he saw a coin on the monitor in the ER room he was in, He asked me to find out if it truly was there, so checked and was amazed to find it. It was as he said, a 1985 nickel on the lower right hand corner. This began a career where stories like this one were a rule and notan exception. This is an example of an NDE.
Source

So what's my point? Your "documented" story in the NDE literature wasn't accurate to what actually took place. It exaggerated on numerous things. First was about the out of body experience of the patient, which Dr. Lerma didn't mentioned. However, he did provide some details about what the patient said, which again, was no mention of out of body experience.

Next, there's the time period in which the patient asked about the coin. Your "documented" version said after resuscitation. Although that could mean any amount of time, it's highly implied to be immediately afterwards. Whereas the testimony of Dr. Lerma, it was days after his admission. Immediately after does appear to be more extraordinary than a few days later, since the latter means that he could've seen it when he was "conscious" as in alive, compared to being "unconscious" as in near dead. Memory mix up is one explanation.

Then there's the exaggerated placement of the coin. Your "documented" story said it was on the right hand corner of an 8ft monitor. But according to Dr. Lerma, the coin was on the lower right corner, and no mention of the height. Keep in mind that the average cardiac monitor, at least for nowadays, is about 4ft tall. So another exaggeration for the purpose of being extraordinary.

And last of all, the most important difference in the two stories, the actual coin itself. Your "documented" story claims that the patient saw a 1985 quarter and the Doctor confirmed it being correct. But according to Dr. Lerma, the patient simply said, a coin, with no further details. The doctor confirmed it to be a 1985 nickel, instead of a quarter.

Isn't strange that the most significant part of the story was the coin, and your story documented the wrong coin.

 

[leroy]

How?
Don't just claim it. Explain it.
How do you propose those can be tested and falsified?

.

If the guy who has the NDE and the out of body experience describes accursedly the stuff in the room above, you can’t conclude “hallucination” nor “lies” …….. it would have been very unlikely to have a hallucination that corresponds to reality and it would be very unlikely to invent a lie that happens to correspond to reality.
If the guy with the NDE reports that in the room above there was a man watching the movie Titanic once can go with the guy above and ask him if he was watching that movie. … hallucinations or lies can’t explain this kind of experiences……………agree?


...
So the claim is that if we find an analogous case it would be justifiable to conclude that a real NDE and a real out of body experience took place……………agree?

 

[leroy]

L

After all.... how many people do you have to believe are either lying or mistaking about straightforward things like this to believe otherwise, right?


Or is there perhaps more going on? Like some type of confirmation bias maybe?

Each claim has to stand or fall by its own merits.

There are ways to test if Alien stories or Big Foot stories are real. And the same is true with NDE.

..if any of these claims passes the tests then we most assume are real.

For example if I have an NDE and an out of body experience and I describe accurately the room above me , this would count as persuasive evidence in favor of NDE……any disagreement?

 

[George-ananda]

Let's go with that.
If even the experts in the field that actually study it, can't explain it..............

Isn't then the only proper thing to say here, that it is unknown?

I will agree that the proper thing is for science to accept that we have something they can not explain going on in these Veridical NDE cases.

However, I, being pro-science but not a follower of scientism, considers other wisdom traditions such as Vedic (Hindu), Theosophical and others. So my belief is that the astral/mental body separates from the physical body at times of death inducing trauma and those bodies can travel independent of the physical body and then have access to information beyond the reach of the physical senses (called Veridical NDEs).

You have a really low standard as to what constitutes "documented".
All I see here, are anecdotal third hand claims.

When a person enters death threatening trauma I would not expect documentation more than what we see with people giving first, second and third hand reports as have been handed down to us. What more should we expect from the real world conditions of these events?

I can tell you hundreds of stories of alien abductees as well.



So I guess that means that you believe that bigfoot exists and that roswell-style grey aliens are abducting people and performing weird sex experiments on them?

I happen to believe in the likelihood of bigfoot, alien abductions and 'reproductive' experimentation too but let's not go there in this thread.

 

[George-ananda]

Exactly. That's why it should remain as unexplained/unknown until there's enough data to know and understand what is happening. We shouldn't just go with the conclusion of non-experts.

I will agree that the proper thing is for science to accept that we have something they can not explain going on in these Veridical NDE cases.

However, I, being pro-science but not a follower of scientism, considers other wisdom traditions such as Vedic (Hindu), Theosophical and others. So my belief is that the astral/mental body separates from the physical body at times of death inducing trauma and those bodies can travel independent of the physical body and then have access to information beyond the reach of the physical senses (called Veridical NDEs).

But the thing is, are the stories true and accurate? Doing investigation and finding stories are easy. What's difficult is doing investigation on the stories to see if they are accurate and not exaggerated.

And here's something that has been given as a testimony:

Yes, during my internship year I was working in the emergency room when a multiple casualties of a collision entered as well as an elderly gentleman having a heart attack. Since all doctors were busy with patients, I cared for the elderly gentleman who had a better chance of survival. He eventually had a cardiac arrest which I was able to bring him out of and during that time he began to speak of the light, God, his life review and so forth. I felt it was hallucinatory but days later after his admission, he said he saw a coin on the monitor in the ER room he was in, He asked me to find out if it truly was there, so checked and was amazed to find it. It was as he said, a 1985 nickel on the lower right hand corner. This began a career where stories like this one were a rule and notan exception. This is an example of an NDE.
Source

So what's my point? Your "documented" story in the NDE literature wasn't accurate to what actually took place. It exaggerated on numerous things. First was about the out of body experience of the patient, which Dr. Lerma didn't mentioned. However, he did provide some details about what the patient said, which again, was no mention of out of body experience.

Next, there's the time period in which the patient asked about the coin. Your "documented" version said after resuscitation. Although that could mean any amount of time, it's highly implied to be immediately afterwards. Whereas the testimony of Dr. Lerma, it was days after his admission. Immediately after does appear to be more extraordinary than a few days later, since the latter means that he could've seen it when he was "conscious" as in alive, compared to being "unconscious" as in near dead. Memory mix up is one explanation.

Then there's the exaggerated placement of the coin. Your "documented" story said it was on the right hand corner of an 8ft monitor. But according to Dr. Lerma, the coin was on the lower right corner, and no mention of the height. Keep in mind that the average cardiac monitor, at least for nowadays, is about 4ft tall. So another exaggeration for the purpose of being extraordinary.

And last of all, the most important difference in the two stories, the actual coin itself. Your "documented" story claims that the patient saw a 1985 quarter and the Doctor confirmed it being correct. But according to Dr. Lerma, the patient simply said, a coin, with no further details. The doctor confirmed it to be a 1985 nickel, instead of a quarter.

Isn't strange that the most significant part of the story was the coin, and your story documented the wrong coin.

I think there are multiple ways to tell the same story highlighting different aspects and supplying more and less detail. The point is the gist of the two stories matches up. Someone confused quarter and nickel apparently but that doesn't change the gist of the story. They both are suggesting an outside the body sensory perspective. Someone would have to be wholesale lying/deceptive to alter the gist of either telling of the story. I doubt that happened.

But lying or being mistaken about the gist of events in every one of say a hundred cases approaches unbelievable.

 

[rational experiences]

Science the human inventor of his conscious controlled human designed machine condition encoded AI. A state.

If he used basic commonsense and did not build or use machines then his commonsense answers are answered.

Humans used radiation and transmitting machines in the human past. The cause effect change in cosmic holy status of evolved cooled gasrs returned earths attack burning of stone mass to keep his transmitting signals he caused active.

Without science or machine existing practiced.

Otherwise he would not be enabled to rebuild machines again. Pretty basic reasoned human consciousness natural bio chemicals is interfered with.

Bio chemistry only owned used by the bio life.

So we are subject constantly to phenomena AI unnatural causes.

As humans consciousness bio designed and built the machine. So life unnaturally inherited evil human science choices.

Humans state conscious is owned by the living. Death is exact and no longer conscious.

If all objects animate or inanimate are constantly recorded how else do you think phenomena occurs?

Science tried to preach we humans are part mechanical. Instead of preaching science designed by humans interferes unnaturally with consciousness.