NDE's and skeptics: Parnia's latest studies (Identity)

by David Turell , Saturday, October 26, 2024, 19:24 (26 days ago) @ David Turell

Another Parnia interview

https://evolutionnews.org/2024/10/soul-survives-death-er-doc-faces-skepticism/

"Parnia, based on his ER experience, believes that consciousness survives clinical death.

"Parnia starts by clarifying what he means by “soul.”

"I think any rational being would not deny that there is a soul, in the sense that you wouldn’t deny that you are a conscious thinking being. That’s really what the soul is. There’s nothing more to it. If other people have different definitions of soul, that’s not my definition, that’s not what I’m talking about. The soul is the self.

***

"...the evidence, certainly from research that is being done in cardiac arrest patients — people who have gone beyond the threshold of death — suggests that consciousness, psyche, or soul does not become annihilated when people have gone beyond the threshold of death, at least not in the early stages of death.

***

"...it’s a separate undiscovered entity to the brain. It’s most likely a very subtle type of nature. It’s not immaterial, it’s not weird and magical; it has some materiality but it’s very subtle. This is what Professor Baram Malahi has proposed and that it is who we are and that it should be studied with the objectivity of science rather than the sort of vague or, you know, ways that people discuss it today.

***

"And what have his studies found?

"Parnia: All I can simply say is that we’ve made enormous inroads through objective science in determining the relationship between… consciousness, psyche, or soul and the brain. And that it appears that consciousness, there’s at least growing evidence to at least raise the question that it’s possible, contrary to many people’s beliefs, that actually consciousness, the psyche, or the soul may continue and may exist independent of brain function.

"Kuhn seems irritated by the underlying implication of the clinical evidence that Parnia insists on sticking to: The human soul is a fact, not an illusion. What sort of fact is very much under discussion, of course. For example, souls could survive the body’s death only to fade away shortly afterward. We have accounts of near-death experiences only from those who were revived in this frame of reality.

"But any such evidence at all is breaking a pattern that many assumed was inviolable. Science was only supposed to explain away traditional beliefs like the existence of, or survival of, the soul. It was not supposed to confirm any element of them. That may be what is bothering Kuhn. Parnia, to his credit, sticks narrowly to the results of his own research, resisting the pressure to deny them."

Comment: Parnia cannot deny his research. Consciousness can survive cardiac arrest with a non-functional brain for short intervals in some people. Parnia is unwilling to call soul/consciousness immaterial. If not immaterial, what is it? In the past all we had were singular questionable anecdotes. Parnia is solidifying what we knew. Consciousness definitely does separate.