Problems with this section; for Frank (Agnosticism)

by David Turell , Wednesday, November 25, 2009, 06:16 (5476 days ago) @ Frank Paris


> Do people from Eastern cultures have this same experience? Is this even known? I think you've made statements to the effect that the same experience has been reported for thousands of years. What is the evidence for this? Do devout Zen Buddhists ever have this experience? What I'm trying to determine is whether there is a cultural and religious bias going on in the experience.-Eastern cultures, yes. The experience tends to mirror the person's religious background. Back thousand of years, I've already mentioned the Tibetan book of the dead: Bardo-Thodol. Word of mouth and then put into writing, I think I remember about 900AD-> 
> In the report you describe, dead people inform the person that someone else has recently died. I can easily imagine how the brain might fabricate this story if my alternative explanation is true, that the person telepathically senses that this other person has recently died by the severance of the telepathic connection. The brain then builds this story of how people known to be dead inform the NDE subject about the new death. The brain does this to "rationalize" the experience of this severance of the telepathic connection to person who just died. The brain of the NDE subject would be likely to construct this story if the subject already subscribes to the Christian mythology of the afterlife.-If lots of folks are telepathic, then your theory might fit. About 20% 0f the resuscitated are NDE'rs.
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> The stories would be much more impressive if they were reported by subjects whose culture and religious beliefs were entirely different from Western monotheistic mythology. But typically individuals have religious dreams taken from their own cultural backgrounds. Even classical mystical experiences from cultures that don't believe in a personal God have experiences of an impersonal God, and Christians always have mystical experiences of a personal God. It's almost impossible to get away from cultural biases, even in genuine mystical experiences.-I answered this above
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> "The majority are pleasant, but around 17% are unpleasant."
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> Maybe those are the people who found themselves at the gates of hell, or who thought that's where they were going if they died.
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> "Frank, I know the scientific method. I've about 34 entries in the world medical literature, from a time I was a research fellow and considered academic medicine as a career."
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> You got so interested in pulling rank on me that you forgot to answer the question. It is very easy to see that ego simply got in the way. Best thing to do is simply to answer the question without getting all ad hominem on me.-I did not attack you. You have a habit of going on an attack yourself. I'm just reminding you that you do not have to review the obvious. As for alternative theories, yours is as good as any. The folks who write about this generally think it is a connection to afterlife; writings by those who have had NDE experiences and those who have looked into it and are third party corroborators. Lommel has suggested that consciousness can become separated from the body. When a patient (in the article) has a flat EEG and EKG and can still tell you who did what and where, while he was in that state, describing it when he is awake later, it makes one wonder what is going on.