General anesthesia and consciousness

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Read the studies rather than asking how the studies are done is my advice.

I've been reading the studies, and they're all other the place. No-one can agree which part of the brain is the reason, which chemical or hormone causes it, or even if they're the brain temporarily dying or not.

This is why I'm asking my question. It's not a directed question to anyone, it's just me calling out into the wind and hoping for a response: how can you categorically test for something like NDEs, that do not cross ethical boundaries? I don't think you can but it'd be interesting if someone could give me an answer. And one of the studies link on this thread, this one, even brings up the point that nearly all claims of NDEs are retrospective, which makes their reliability virtually impossible to verify.

It is an interesting thing, 100%, and it would be cool to see a verifiable, definitive answer on the subject.

 

[All Becomes New]

that do not cross ethical boundaries?

They do though. People from pretty much every culture have experienced NDEs even across time. In fact, we might even say this is how the ideas about heaven and hell developed in the first place. That's not to diminish the reality of heaven and hell but to provide corroborative evidence of them.

which makes their reliability virtually impossible to verify.

Well, I mean, they don't all fit into that mold, so that can't be it. Again, if you want to take the NDEs with the least amount of evidence for them, you could probably explain all of them. But when people know things it is impossible for them to know, it tells us something else is going on with them.

 

[Aaron112]

In fact, we might even say this is how the ideas about heaven and hell developed in the first place. That's not to diminish the reality of heaven and hell but to provide corroborative evidence of them.

Actually, historically, the fairy tales for most of the world replace or take the place of truth.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

They do though. People from pretty much every culture have experienced NDEs even across time. In fact, we might even say this is how the ideas about heaven and hell developed in the first place. That's not to diminish the reality of heaven and hell but to provide corroborative evidence of them.

ETHICAL. Not ethnic. ETHICAL, as in ethics and morals.

Well, I mean, they don't all fit into that mold, so that can't be it. Again, if you want to take the NDEs with the least amount of evidence for them, you could probably explain all of them. But when people know things it is impossible for them to know, it tells us something else is going on with them.

Anecdotes are just that: anecdotes. Stories, claims. Which are, by their own nature, nearly impossible for a single person to back up without another person or group of people to verify them. That's why such claims are not permissible in courts as evidence, which is something I know from experience (not as prosecuted or defendant, before anyone says, but I was on a jury a few years back).

 

[Aaron112]

But when people know things it is impossible for them to know, it tells us something else is going on with them.

Maybe natural/ soulish, maybe forgotten, maybe demons, maybe God's Gracious Allowance ....
in the flesh, in the world, in the carnal, when advertised/ marketed , it is
not usually, if ever, God.

 

[Aaron112]

It is an interesting thing, 100%, and it would be cool to see a verifiable, definitive answer on the subject.

Maybe the closest, by far the most common, to 100% , is hollywood/ antics/ for show.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Maybe the closest, by far the most common, to 100% , is hollywood/ antics/ for show.

... I have no idea what you're trying to say.

 

[All Becomes New]

ETHICAL. Not ethnic. ETHICAL, as in ethics and morals.

My mistake. I would never advise trying to kill someone and bring them back to life to get information on the other side, obviously.

Which are, by their own nature, nearly impossible for a single person to back up without another person or group of people to verify them.

I think you missed the part about these people knowing things it is impossible for them to know.

Maybe natural/ soulish, maybe forgotten, maybe demons, maybe God's Gracious Allowance ....
in the flesh, in the world, in the carnal, when advertised/ marketed , it is
not usually, if ever, God.

They are completely passive events. People from every religion experience them, including Christians.

But I am curious why you are so opposed to them to say you would prefer they come from a bad place before you accept they are real.

 

[Aaron112]

Claims have to be discarded as evidence since anecdotes as essentially just-so stories that have no way of being able to be substantiated one way or another.

Like if a 4 year old comes running in the house, yelling 'there's a lion in the back yard!' ?

 

[Aaron112]

But I am curious why you are so opposed to them to say you would prefer they come from a bad place before you accept they are real.

Because the evidence so far, in the last several decades, shows they come from a bad place/ fake/ for money, deception, attention.

 

[All Becomes New]

Because the evidence so far, in the last several decades, shows they come from a bad place/ fake/ for money, deception, attention.

No, that is not true. They are passive. About 30 million people have experienced them in the West.

Please link something that says they come from a bad place or that all of them are fake, or people are faking it or doing it for attention.

 

[Aaron112]

Claims have to be discarded as evidence since anecdotes as essentially just-so stories that have no way of being able to be substantiated one way or another.

Like hollywood martian movies.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

My mistake. I would never advise trying to kill someone and bring them back to life to get information on the other side, obviously.

Exactly my point. To get a NDE, you need to be at the point of death. Hence their name, but that crosses both ethical and moral grounds for obvious reasons.

I think you missed the part about these people knowing things it is impossible for them to know.

Which again is a claim, and cannot be 100% verified by just their word alone. How do you know that they didn't see such things before they entered the state or knew about them beforehand?

This is why science does not operate on 'just-so' claims, nor do courts of law. Both know, that without actual testable evidence, anecdotes and claims mean nothing.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Like if a 4 year old comes running in the house, yelling 'there's a lion in the back yard!' ?

What point are you trying to make?

 

[All Becomes New]

Exactly my point. To get a NDE, you need to be at the point of death. Hence their name, but that crosses both ethical and moral grounds for obvious reasons.

Right, which is never done for these studies.

Which again is a claim, and cannot be 100% verified by just their word alone. How do you know that they didn't see such things before they entered the state or knew about them beforehand?

Uh... how does someone who is born blind know what someone who had been dead looks? Why would they bring it up only after they have had this experience?

I'm kinda confused because you say you have been studying this, but don't seem to know the evidences for them very well.

 

[All Becomes New]

Hallucinations have been produced 'easily' by pressure upon certain points physically or with electricity or other for centuries. Famous, or in-famous 'healers' have known this for centuries and used it to produce seemingly spiritual results when they were totally fraudulent.

Why a Near-Death Experience Isn’t Proof of Heaven

Did a neurosurgeon go to heaven?

www.scientificamerican.com

"In any case, there is a reason they are called near-death experiences: the people who have them are not actually dead.

Second, we now know of a number of factors that produce such fantastical hallucinations, which are masterfully explained by the great neurologist Oliver Sacks in his 2012 book Hallucinations (Knopf). For example, Swiss neuroscientist Olaf Blanke and his colleagues produced a “shadow person” in a patient by electrically stimulating her left temporoparietal junction. “When the woman was lying down,” Sacks reports, “a mild stimulation of this area gave her the impression that someone was behind her; a stronger stimulation allowed her to define the ‘someone’ as young but of indeterminate sex.”

Sacks recalls his experience treating 80 deeply parkinsonian postencephalitic patients (as seen in the 1990 film Awakenings, which starred Robin Williams in a role based on Sacks), and notes, “I found that perhaps a third of them had experienced visual hallucinations for years before l-dopa was introduced—hallucinations of a predominantly benign and sociable sort.” He speculates that “it might be related to their isolation and social deprivation, their longing for the world—an attempt to provide a virtual reality, a hallucinatory substitute for the real world which had been taken from them.”

Migraine headaches also produce hallucinations, which Sacks himself has experienced as a longtime sufferer, including a “shimmering light” that was “dazzlingly bright”"

So you are quoting movies as evidence now?

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Right, which is never done for these studies.

Exactly my point. So apart from relying on one-off, unreliable claims that are near impossible to verify, how can they be scientifically tested?

Uh... how does someone who is born blind know what someone who had been dead looks like when they are dead? Why would they bring it up only after they have had this experience?

I don't know. You tell me. This is the first time I've seen such a claim made, and it has a good whiff of falsehood to it. The more extraordinary the claim, the more extraordinary the evidence needs to be.

I'm kinda confused because you say you have been studying this, but don't seem to know the evidences for them very well.

I never said I've been studying this. I just said that I read some of the studies in this thread and have been reading this thread. This is the first time I've seen NDEs talked about somewhat seriously and it caught my attention.

 

[All Becomes New]

Here's another study that concludes:

Multiple lines of evidence point to the conclusion that near-death experiences are medically inexplicable and cannot be explained by known physical brain function. Many of the preceding lines of evidence would be remarkable if they were reported by a group of individuals during conscious experiences.

NCBI | NLM | NIH

 

[Mountainmike]

Please refresh my memory, where exactly did I say this?

Your post #10
“ The idea that NDE's can't be explained by something that the brain is doing... simply suggests that we don't know enough about what the brain is doing.”
you assume undiscovered brain function which doesn’t fit the evidence.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Here's another study that concludes:

NCBI | NLM | NIH

I am not arguing that people are saying that NDEs are or are not real. People claim they happen, so we have evidence that people say they happen.

How can it be tested to verify that such a thing is happening? That's what I'm asking.