Blonde hair blue eye angels huh. Is this guy a closet Nazi?
“His book, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife, will be published by Simon & Schuster on Oct. 23, 2012.”
^LOL.
Where’s the proof!?
Besides all the waffle about his cortex bla bla bla, how is this really any different to other peoples near death experiences? What makes him so unique that he can write abook & arrogantly call it proof.
[quote]BeefEater wrote:
I don’t see any “proof” and the fact that he has written a book on the subject makes it all the more suspicious.[/quote]
Apparently “proof” to this guy is “I experienced it in a coma. Therefore: True”
Obviously the guy had a very emotional experience happen… All magically in line with his current beliefs and cultural commonalities, whilst in a COMA. This doesn’t give him any pause for some reason.
And somehow his conclusion is not “Wow, what a crazy experience my brain had while in a coma,” instead of “everything I experienced truly exists and is real… Oh, and God loves me, and chicks with blue eyes and high cheek bones greet you in the after life.”
Many of the skeptical comments below the article are right on the money. There is no reason to suspect that what happened to him ACTUALLY happened, and there is EVERY reason to suspect that it was a phenomenon generated by his brain at some point shortly before or after his coma. This is simply a God of gaps argument (Science can’t explain it! Therefore, God is real and loves me unconditionally and Jesus is Einstein!)
[quote]Lonnie123 wrote:
[quote]BeefEater wrote:
I don’t see any “proof” and the fact that he has written a book on the subject makes it all the more suspicious.[/quote]
Apparently “proof” to this guy is “I experienced it in a coma. Therefore: True”
Obviously the guy had a very emotional experience happen… All magically in line with his current beliefs and cultural commonalities, whilst in a COMA. This doesn’t give him any pause for some reason.
And somehow his conclusion is not “Wow, what a crazy experience my brain had while in a coma,” instead of “everything I experienced truly exists and is real… Oh, and God loves me, and chicks with blue eyes and high cheek bones greet you in the after life.”
Many of the skeptical comments below the article are right on the money. There is no reason to suspect that what happened to him ACTUALLY happened, and there is EVERY reason to suspect that it was a phenomenon generated by his brain at some point shortly before or after his coma. This is simply a God of gaps argument (Science can’t explain it! Therefore, God is real and loves me unconditionally and Jesus is Einstein!)[/quote]
Bingo! Perhaps this was all thought up after the coma and he remembers it as happening at the time of his coma. How does he know this took place when his cortex was inactive?!!!
How long before they try to make a movie about this and keep the money train going?
[quote]Cortes wrote:
[quote]stefan128 wrote:
[quote]krazykoukides wrote:
[quote]stefan128 wrote:
This is actually very interesting. Has anyone ever said they saw hell or came close to dying and going there.
On topic though, I saw this article yesterday. I still find it hard to know what living forever will be like. For example, what do you do forever, in all honesty, it can kind of scares me. [/quote]
I couldn’t agree more with your last statement. When I do lay in bed pondering my own existence and if there is an afterlife… when thinking about the afterlife being forever I do tend to panic a little. Forever is a really fawking long time and I panic because I am afraid I would forget people/things that are very dear to me; such as my wife, father, mother, or even dog.
No matter how insignificant our individual lives may be in the grand scheme of things… I still don’t want to forget mine - even if I end up existing forever. Scary thought.
p.s. I’m also scared of the flip side of the coin: the possibility of nothingness and absence of existence. It all be scary![/quote]
I know what you mean. I believe in heaven and the after life I just do not fully understand everything(Im catholic btw). I do not fear forgetting loved ones or anything but I just can’t contemplate living forever. I know there are some other religious people on these boards who I believe could explain everything but no one knows everything about anything.[/quote]
Heaven and the afterlife do not exist in spacetime. So our perception of “forever” there is necessarily incomprehensible to us on this plane of existence.
I don’t know what it will feel like, but it will not feel like it has a beginning, end, or even a progression. You’ll just “be.”
[/quote]
So you’ll end up with a completely pointless existence. High points include a void and singing bird waves. Why the fuck would I be good my whole life for an acid trip? The entire reason I avoid that shit now is because I hate the feeling of being out of control and the inability to think. I don’t want that shit, I’d rather take hell.
Not getting mad at you, mostly getting mad that the whole idea of heaven is pretty much lsd.
Interesting story, though…if this counts as ‘proof’ of the afterlife…well, I’m probably a Satsuma & I don’t even realise it!!
[quote]Alex Good wrote:
[quote]Cortes wrote:
[quote]stefan128 wrote:
[quote]krazykoukides wrote:
[quote]stefan128 wrote:
This is actually very interesting. Has anyone ever said they saw hell or came close to dying and going there.
On topic though, I saw this article yesterday. I still find it hard to know what living forever will be like. For example, what do you do forever, in all honesty, it can kind of scares me. [/quote]
I couldn’t agree more with your last statement. When I do lay in bed pondering my own existence and if there is an afterlife… when thinking about the afterlife being forever I do tend to panic a little. Forever is a really fawking long time and I panic because I am afraid I would forget people/things that are very dear to me; such as my wife, father, mother, or even dog.
No matter how insignificant our individual lives may be in the grand scheme of things… I still don’t want to forget mine - even if I end up existing forever. Scary thought.
p.s. I’m also scared of the flip side of the coin: the possibility of nothingness and absence of existence. It all be scary![/quote]
I know what you mean. I believe in heaven and the after life I just do not fully understand everything(Im catholic btw). I do not fear forgetting loved ones or anything but I just can’t contemplate living forever. I know there are some other religious people on these boards who I believe could explain everything but no one knows everything about anything.[/quote]
Heaven and the afterlife do not exist in spacetime. So our perception of “forever” there is necessarily incomprehensible to us on this plane of existence.
I don’t know what it will feel like, but it will not feel like it has a beginning, end, or even a progression. You’ll just “be.”
[/quote]
So you’ll end up with a completely pointless existence. High points include a void and singing bird waves. Why the fuck would I be good my whole life for an acid trip? The entire reason I avoid that shit now is because I hate the feeling of being out of control and the inability to think. I don’t want that shit, I’d rather take hell.
Not getting mad at you, mostly getting mad that the whole idea of heaven is pretty much lsd.[/quote]
Well
I do think the after life is like a drug trip. It has to be. Your last few minutes of life are probably spent experiencing a chemical dump in the brain. You have a good trip if you have lived a life that you deemed as “right” if you are harboring negative feelings and guilt then you’ll have a bad trip.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Yep, just like I thought…here comes the barnyard full of old hens (except this time almost without variance they are the college age male crowd) clucking away about needing “proof.”
What intellectual geniuses you fellers are. I feel graced being in your presence.[/quote]
Well it is titled “proof of heaven” so looking for actual proof doesn’t seem so outlandish.
I am not trying to get into an argument about your beliefs, they are yours and more power to you. I am just not seeing any “proof” here beyond what natives on psilocybin have been seeing for centuries. Does that mean there is no heaven? No, but it doesn’t prove it either.
BTW why is this not in PWI where it belongs?
To paraphrase Douglas Adams.
God: ‘I refuse to prove my existence for proof denies faith, and faith is the foundation of my existence.’
Man: ‘But I can prove heaven exists.’
God: ‘Ah, I forgot about that’…and then dissapears in a puff of Unlogic.
Now whats for dinner…flying spaghetti meatballs anyone.
[quote]strungoutboy21 wrote:
I’d be more interested to see “proof” if hell exists.[/quote]
Just google near-death experiences… There’s plenty out there.
[quote]Makavali wrote:
[quote]Cortes wrote:
I’ve read a few stories of hellish NDEs. They didn’t sound too fun, either. [/quote]
DMT is a hell of a drug[/quote]
So is fentanyl. Ugh.
[quote]smh23 wrote:
That was very vivid and in many ways beautiful.
I have a hard time resisting cynicism in cases like this: “He was in a coma, that science cannot currently account for this hallucination does not mean that it was not a mere hallucination.” Or even worse: “This is an outright lie, fabricated for fame or money.”
I guess one day I will find out.
Edit: It sounded a lot like what someone with a gift for creative writing might imagine the afterlife to be like. That is, it was heavily populated with familiar tropes and motifs. Which is not to say I think someone would be stupid or naive to believe it.
I certainly wouldn’t mind believing it.[/quote]
A couple of things strike me about NDE’s, and this is usually when I trust their validity, is when the experiencer says that the reality of it was ‘realer than real’. The other, is when they are able to know of events that they could not have possibly been privy too in their dead state. Like seeing other people in other places and what they are doing. Being able to describe that in detail.
I can see the argument that all this is part and parcel to a dying mind and the electro-chemical reactions thus resulting, UNTIL they do see verifiable things they could not have known. Then that argument has no explanation for that.
And dare I side bar that his description of how the universe is unified by being all parts of the same fabric falls dead in line with the cosmological argument I tout so frequently?
Physical world:
Shit is made of atoms, atoms are made of neutrons, protons, and electrons, attracted by electromagnatism which are further subdivided into a vast array of subatomic particles, which, if true, eventually breaks dowm to one dimensional strings. These strings break down to energy, attraction and movement, then ???
Doesn’t matter much what the physical object is, they all have these components in common. The fabric of the physical universe is indeed unified by these facts.
So I believe the guy. His expressed experience falls right in line with what little we do know about our physical universe, can’t see why he’d lie about the rest. Especially since he is going to catch shit and be maligned for it.
Which heaven did he see? This is crap seriously. I don’t doubt he had an experience, but I see no evidence of heaven.
On another note, my best friend was just picked up by aliens…
[quote]Lonnie123 wrote:
[quote]BeefEater wrote:
I don’t see any “proof” and the fact that he has written a book on the subject makes it all the more suspicious.[/quote]
Apparently “proof” to this guy is “I experienced it in a coma. Therefore: True”
Obviously the guy had a very emotional experience happen… All magically in line with his current beliefs and cultural commonalities, whilst in a COMA. This doesn’t give him any pause for some reason.
[/quote]
How do you have an ‘emotional experience’ which a non-functioning cortex? Just curious how that would work. He did go into detail on how the emotional and cognitive centers of his brain where shut down. Either that or everything known about neuroscience is wrong.
[quote]
And somehow his conclusion is not “Wow, what a crazy experience my brain had while in a coma,” instead of “everything I experienced truly exists and is real… Oh, and God loves me, and chicks with blue eyes and high cheek bones greet you in the after life.”
Many of the skeptical comments below the article are right on the money. There is no reason to suspect that what happened to him ACTUALLY happened, and there is EVERY reason to suspect that it was a phenomenon generated by his brain at some point shortly before or after his coma. This is simply a God of gaps argument (Science can’t explain it! Therefore, God is real and loves me unconditionally and Jesus is Einstein!)[/quote]
He wasn’t making an argument he was relaying an experience. He was not making any sort of ‘God of gaps’ argument. And the fact that this guy is a neurosurgeon, leads me to believe he knows a little more about the brain than we do which is why he when to great pains to show that the images taken of his brain are evidence that it could not have possibly been a function of it.
There is always reason for skepticism, but there is clearly not “EVERY reason to suspect that it was a phenomenon generated by his brain” since he went to great pains to show otherwise.
Mods: Can this be moved to PWI? It does belong there.
[quote]jskrabac wrote:
How long before they try to make a movie about this and keep the money train going?
[/quote]
There’ss lot’s of NDE experiences out there. What makes this one unique is that this guys knows enough about the brain to know it could not have been a function of the brain.
"I understand that what Alexander experienced was strange, powerful, and profound and is coupled with the fact that he experienced a brush with death and survived. I will not presume to know how such an experience would affect me. This does not mean, however, that we can take his interpretation at face value.
Alexander, in my opinion, has failed to be true to the scientist he claims that he is. He did not step back from his powerful experience and ask dispassionate questions. Instead he concluded that his experience was unique, that it is proof of heaven, and that it defies any possible scientific explanation. He then goes on to give a hand-waving quantum mechanics, the universe is all unity, explanation for the supernatural. This is a failure of scientific and critical thinking.
Addressing his one major unstated premise, that the experienced occurred while his cortex was inactive, demolishes his claims and his interpretation of his experience.
As a neuroscientist I admit a fascination with such experiences. I would love to experience something similar, to see what it is like (although I am not willing to damage my brain or take mild-altering drugs to do it). I would think that a neuroscientist would see such an experience as a powerful window into how the brain works (as Susan Blackmore did), how it constructs reality, and how the subjective experience that results from that construction can be altered, not as a window into a mystical and supernatural world."