Atheistic Neuropathologist Sees Christ, becomes Orthodox Priest

  • Thread starter Thread starter Kamalayka
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
celluloid said:
My point is that actual nearness to death in NDEs is in the eye of the beholder, to put it fairly.
Click to expand...
The ‘beholder’ would be clinicians. For example, an anaesthetist may be measuring and observing heart function via an ECG, respiration and body temperature, a neurosurgeon may be measuring brain function via EEG. Clinicians regard death as a process which can be reversed providing brain death has not occured.

Cardiac arrest, respiratory arrest, severe hypothermia and severe shock due to loss of blood volume or massive release of antigens are all examples of being near death, but not dead. They may be reversible depending upon how quickly medical intervention is available. These are very diferent clinical states to that of neurological degeneration in which a person can live for many years - persistent vegetative state being an example.

The other weakness in your argument is that people with advanced Alzheimer’s are unable to communicate any experiences that they may have had due to damage to Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas in the brain. They cannot articulate intelligibly. So not reporting NDEs in this state is not surprising. They cannot tell you what they had for breakfast or that they are in pain from a poorly positioned pillow either.
 
Fran65 said:
The ‘beholder’ would be clinicians. For example, an anaesthetist may be measuring and observing heart function via an ECG, respiration and body temperature, a neurosurgeon may be measuring brain function via EEG. Clinicians regard death as a process which can be reversed providing brain death has not occured.
Click to expand...
I regard brain death as definitive, and surely you can see this has to be the naturalist perspective. It may be that in some NDE cases, brain death may have apparently occurred by the EEG measure, but should a person recover, the brain was evidently and in fact always physically viable, barring a miracle.
Cardiac arrest, respiratory arrest, severe hypothermia and severe shock due to loss of blood volume or massive release of antigens are all examples of being near death, but not dead. They may be reversible depending upon how quickly medical intervention is available. These are very diferent clinical states to that of neurological degeneration in which a person can live for many years - persistent vegetative state being an example.
Click to expand...
The other weakness in your argument is that people with advanced Alzheimer’s are unable to communicate any experiences that they may have had due to damage to Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas in the brain. They cannot articulate intelligibly. So not reporting NDEs in this state is not surprising. They cannot tell you what they had for breakfast or that they are in pain from a poorly positioned pillow either.
Click to expand...
Yet we have mountain climbers who have a fall long enough to think about their own mortality and experiencing classic NDE’s, even as they plummet down a mountain. These NDE’s precisely underline my point that it’s the psychological and circumstantial proximity to death is sufficient to induce NDEs and not necessarily the physical damage that is important. (This is not to say that all NDEs have purely psychological causes)
40.png
Morse:
  • "The experiences do not only occur to dying dysfunctional brains. The Journal of the Swiss Alpine Club, in the late 1800s, reported 30 first hand accounts of mountain climbers who fell from great heights and lived. The climbers reported being out of their physical body, seeing heaven, having life reviews, and even hearing the impact of their bodies hitting the ground. They were not seriously injured."*
Click to expand...
Terror and shock seems to be directly involved rather than pure bodily injury, even though – obviously – gross bodily injury can induce terror.
And people who approach death and recover during of a long term illness, and who can report their experiences, have fewer NDEs. Conversely, if a person does not have the time to psychologically prepare for what seems to be impending death, NDE’s are more common.

And here’s the rub for the naturalist: It’s heads I win, tails you lose conundrums for anyone trying to disprove an afterlife. On the one hand, we can observe incremental brain damage that is consistent with a naturalist/physicalist position, but on the other hand, we can never have proof that experience ceases altogether once dead, since dead men tell no tales. Similarly, on the one hand, we have recovered people who have supposed otherworldly experiences as their life hangs in the balance, yet on the other hand, their brains were evidently intact enough to allow them to tell the tale. If they can flap their gums afterward, I say they were not even close to a state of actual death in a purely physical sense.
 
On your last point - that recovery means that the person was not near death - we disagree. It seems from your post that you do not accept that death is a process and not a state. The majority of clinicians would also disagree. They are a precise bunch and would not use the term ‘death’ or ‘near death’ unless it had a real, clinical meaning.

I have a student who had a cardiac arrest at school. He was seconds away from death. His heart and breathing had stopped, he was completely unconscious. Are you seriously suggesting that he was no closer to death than I am as I sit here typing this?

Brain death, as I stated is irreversible. Changes in EEG activity, other than where it indicates brain death tell us little about the process of death, other than that changes in level of consciousness are occurring.

The materialist position regarding brain activity and consciousness is one that is intuitively appealing, but not as unassailable as many assume. There are many, many threads on that subject.

The reports from mountian climbers are interesting - psychological proximity to death is without doubt important. It could be hypothesized that the individual may be experiencing NDE. The physical threat of death however is immediate and this does not apply to those with degenerative brain disorders.
 
Fran65 said:
On your last point - that recovery means that the person was not near death - we disagree. It seems from your post that you do not accept that death is a process and not a state. The majority of clinicians would also disagree. They are a precise bunch and would not use the term ‘death’ or ‘near death’ unless it had a real, clinical meaning.
Click to expand...
There’s an irony here. This thread is partly about a big mistake made by clinicians who placed a live man in a morgue.

I have to be precise in what I mean about nearness to death. It is true that, as a practical matter, clinicians do have to determine some kind point of no return, a point at which the determine that the patient is beyond all help or in an irreversible physical condition, and crucially the heart. But clearly, this point is not passed by any NDEs, and though they are in danger of going beyond that point, they haven’t passed that boundary, since the point of irreversibility is…well…irreversible. The problem with the clinical definition of nearness to death is that the term is relative in terms of the resources available.

A condition that is easily resolvable in the Mayo Clinic may be much more grave in a small regional hospital. Likewise, all modern medical hospitals are able to easily respond to certain kinds of heart attacks with treatments unheard of a century ago. If your heart stops, then you’re dead, according to medicine back then, and that was because they had almost no means to revive or repair a heart. Or for a man in the desert with a broken leg, delirious with thirst and pain, death would be near, but only if help is not. A glass of water, a splint and a helping hand may be all he needs. So the clinical definition is only relative to the available capabilities to save someone in a precarious condition, and not the absolute condition of the brain, the seat of consciousness, and the brain is what makes you who you are.

The only thing I’m trying to say is that from the naturalist perspective, a “Near Death Experience” is a misnomer. I’m not even trying to discredit or debunk the supernaturalness of NDEs, but for me, NDEs are given an undeserved mystique by its apparent association with death. That association is also parlayed into evidence of an afterlife, but that’s not going to fly with an armchair naturalist who can afford a much more narrow definition of death than the urgent lifesaving but relative considerations of a clinician, and the much vaguer ideas of the general public.
I have a student who had a cardiac arrest at school. He was seconds away from death. His heart and breathing had stopped, he was completely unconscious. Are you seriously suggesting that he was no closer to death than I am as I sit here typing this?
Click to expand...
No, I’m suggesting that he was no closer to death (that’s assuming he recovered) than a person almost being hit by a train. Although the student’s body was in a worse condition, the damage wasn’t sufficient to cause brain death. And he is closer to death than you or I am typing but only in the sense that he is in real danger of dying and not the sense that he experiences brain death. Precariousness does not equal closeness.
Brain death, as I stated is irreversible. Changes in EEG activity, other than where it indicates brain death tell us little about the process of death, other than that changes in level of consciousness are occurring.
Click to expand...
The materialist position regarding brain activity and consciousness is one that is intuitively appealing, but not as unassailable as many assume. There are many, many threads on that subject.
Click to expand...
The reports from mountian climbers are interesting - psychological proximity to death is without doubt important. It could be hypothesized that the individual may be experiencing NDE. The physical threat of death however is immediate and this does not apply to those with degenerative brain disorders.
Click to expand...
I don’t disagree and my materialist (I don’t like the term materialist btw for a couple of reasons) idea of death is debatable, of course. But I never said that I think that degenerative brain disorders are more likely to have NDEs, just that they were closer to actual brain death. And I think I’ve shown that “psychological proximity to death experiences” are sufficient to explain some in-hospital NDEs. Let’s call them PPDEs. 😃
 
It seems that we’ve taken a few posts to return to my first post on this thread. That many, including atheists, will explain NDEs as a result of psychological stress and will attribute them to cognitive and emotional processes.

We have established however that we disagree regarding a definition of near death. NDE, it seems from the information regarding mountaineers falling can occur whether or not physiological processes are occurring that will result in death unless reversed.

This does not mean however that NDEs are purely psychological or solely due to physiological processes.Similar experiences can occur as a result of differing processes. For example, hallucinations can be due to brain damage, brain dysfunction, drugs, stress and environmental factors.

As it happens, despite being a relatively young woman, I have a life threatening heart condition that can result in cardiac arrest at any time. I’ve also had my heart stopped several times during cardiac surgery. I have never had an NDE - either through psychological stress (which can be considerable at times) or during surgery.

My father however did have an out of body experience during a very stressful period of his life. He was not near death at the time but was very stressed. This suggest to me that experiences that are similar to NDE reports can occur as a result of psychological stress (which we know results in physiological changes).

Of course, single case studies are not generalisable, but can be informative for future empirical work.

As for the ‘live’ man; he was close enough to death to have a certificate issued and be placed in a mortuary drawer. He was not dead and no-one is claiming that he returned from the dead, but he was close to death both physiologically and psychologically.

Are you really arguing that there are only two states? - Alive or dead and nothing in between? In which case there are few who agree with you and many who disagree. You seem to be arguing that ‘dying’ does not occur, which is clearly not true.

In one of my earlier posts I pointed out that the heart, circulation and lungs are involved in dying. As they fail - the heart is unable to pump, oxygenated blood is not reaching enough of the body and the ability to move air using the lungs is reduced the person can be properly spoken of as dying. They are not dead - hence they can be revived, but are dying. This is where the term near death is clinically justified and can be diagnosed.
 
Fran65 said:
It seems that we’ve taken a few posts to return to my first post on this thread. That many, including atheists, will explain NDEs as a result of psychological stress and will attribute them to cognitive and emotional processes.

We have established however that we disagree regarding a definition of near death. NDE, it seems from the information regarding mountaineers falling can occur whether or not physiological processes are occurring that will result in death unless reversed.

This does not mean however that NDEs are purely psychological or solely due to physiological processes.Similar experiences can occur as a result of differing processes. For example, hallucinations can be due to brain damage, brain dysfunction, drugs, stress and environmental factors.

As it happens, despite being a relatively young woman, I have a life threatening heart condition that can result in cardiac arrest at any time. I’ve also had my heart stopped several times during cardiac surgery. I have never had an NDE - either through psychological stress (which can be considerable at times) or during surgery.
Click to expand...
I’m very troubled to hear about your condition, I had no idea as I posted about such things in a casual manner, so I sincerely apologize for what would be insensitive. I appreciate that you let me know and hope that your condition improves.
My father however did have an out of body experience during a very stressful period of his life. He was not near death at the time but was very stressed. This suggest to me that experiences that are similar to NDE reports can occur as a result of psychological stress (which we know results in physiological changes).
Click to expand...
Of course, single case studies are not generalisable, but can be informative for future empirical work.
Click to expand...
As for the ‘live’ man; he was close enough to death to have a certificate issued and be placed in a mortuary drawer. He was not dead and no-one is claiming that he returned from the dead, but he was close to death both physiologically and psychologically.
Click to expand...
Are you really arguing that there are only two states? - Alive or dead and nothing in between? In which case there are few who agree with you and many who disagree. You seem to be arguing that ‘dying’ does not occur, which is clearly not true.
Click to expand...
In one of my earlier posts I pointed out that the heart, circulation and lungs are involved in dying. As they fail - the heart is unable to pump, oxygenated blood is not reaching enough of the body and the ability to move air using the lungs is reduced the person can be properly spoken of as dying. They are not dead - hence they can be revived, but are dying. This is where the term near death is clinically justified and can be diagnosed.
Click to expand...
Since I use the brain as my yardstick, it is possible for the brain to be severely enough damaged that one could debate whether consciousness has ceased completely or if the brain can only maintain core functions of the body with help, etc. This is a slippery slope problem. I do see shades of gray here. But I don’t think that it is either a state or process that one can slip in and out of as can be seen with other failing organs that have a much better ability to recover than the brain. One thing about the brain that I know is that it has very little ability to regenerate as some other organs can.

If brain damage is too great, it will damage all surrounding redundant tissue, and there will be an irreversible loss of preexisting function, except through re-learning. If the higher functioning of the brain is extremely damaged, it will more or less remain in that state if no further assault occurs. So I would not call that a process, but it is a gray area as far as whether a severely damaged brain contains a viable human being.
 
You haven’t posted anything that has seemed insenstive to me.

You’re right in that brain death is a state, and it is the one used by clinicians to determine whether the person is still alive in a meaningful way, and thus whether their organs can be harvested and life support withdrawn. Brain damage in many cases is also irreversible, although some recovery is possible as it seems that plasticity remains well into adulthood. It had been thought that only children had the brain plasticity and could recover function such as language.

However the brain does enter a process of reducing activity as dying proceeds, and up to a point this is also reversible.

You could argue that the person referred to in the morgue was undergoing a slow dying process and that the release of stress hormones at the incision of his abdomen revived him sufficiently to be recognised as still living. He did need active resuscitation however and although he was dying, his brain had been protected, presumably becuase of the low temperature and slowed metabolism as a result.
 
The man was DEAD!

It is impossible for an atheist to get that because it would contradict their world view.

Yes, he was DEAD!!

NO heart beat for three days, blood pooled to underside of body, rigor mortis set in, HE WAS DEAD.
 
Kamalayka said:
The man was DEAD!

It is impossible for an atheist to get that because it would contradict their world view.

Yes, he was DEAD!!

NO heart beat for three days, blood pooled to underside of body, rigor mortis set in, HE WAS DEAD.
Click to expand...
I was dead for 3 years, but then a magic healing crystal brought me back to life but it disintegrated because you can only use it once.
Go ahead, prove me wrong.
 
liquidpele said:
I was dead for 3 years, but then a magic healing crystal brought me back to life but it disintegrated because you can only use it once.
Go ahead, prove me wrong.
Click to expand...
Why would this doctor, an avowed atheist, suddenly make up this story?
 
There is also a very good book written by a psychologist that considers the evidence for NDEs, OBEs and other aspects of the paranormal. I’ve only read the chapter on NDEs and OBEs so far, and am impressed with some of the empirical, experimental evidence presented. If valid and reliable then it suggests that there is evidence for an afterlife and for consciousness leaving the body. I have not had time to check the references however.

Anecodotal evidence is presented and discussed and this, in my opinion, is entirely appropriate. These accounts led to many of the investigations and theories discussed and are supported by the empirical evidence presented.

The book isn’t perfect. The author is clearly of the opinion that NDEs and OBEs occur, but it is fairly balanced and considers the alternative explanations thoroughly.

David Fontana: Is There an Afterlife: A Comprehensive Review of the Evidence.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top