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the_ignored
SFN Addict
2562 Posts |
 Posted - 09/14/2011 : 00:16:12
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It's starting to look like it.
| Recently, a host of studies has revealed potential underpinnings for all the elements of such experiences. "Many of the phenomena associated with near-death experiences can be biologically explained," says neuroscientist Dean Mobbs, at the University of Cambridge's Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. Mobbs and Caroline Watt at the University of Edinburgh detailed this research online August 17 in Trends in Cognitive Sciences. |
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>From: enuffenuff@fastmail.fm
(excerpt follows):
> I'm looking to teach these two bastards a lesson they'll never forget.
> Personal visit by mates of mine. No violence, just a wee little chat.
>
> **** has also committed more crimes than you can count with his
> incitement of hatred against a religion. That law came in about 2007
> much to ****'s ignorance. That is fact and his writing will become well
> know as well as him becoming a publicly known icon of hatred.
>
> Good luck with that fuckwit. And Reynold, fucking run, and don't stop.
> Disappear would be best as it was you who dared to attack me on my
> illness knowing nothing of the cause. You disgust me and you are top of
> the list boy. Again, no violence. Just regular reminders of who's there
> and visits to see you are behaving. Nothing scary in reality. But I'd
> still disappear if I was you.
What brought that on? this. Original posting here.
Another example of this guy's lunacy here. |
Edited by - the_ignored on 09/14/2011 00:19:15
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
Posted - 09/14/2011 : 08:52:53 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by the_ignored
It's starting to look like it.
| Recently, a host of studies has revealed potential underpinnings for all the elements of such experiences. "Many of the phenomena associated with near-death experiences can be biologically explained," says neuroscientist Dean Mobbs, at the University of Cambridge's Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. Mobbs and Caroline Watt at the University of Edinburgh detailed this research online August 17 in Trends in Cognitive Sciences. |
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This is an area of research that Susan Blackmore worked in for many years. She started a believer, and the more she looked at OBE's and NDE's she became a skeptic. The science wasn't as good as it is now, but her conclusions are being upheld by newer research like the study above. Very cool!
Near-Death Experiences: In or out of the body? By Susan Blackmore for Skeptical Inquirer, published in 1991.
Blackmore:
What is it like to die? Although most of us fear death to a greater or lesser extent, there are now more and more people who have "come back" from states close to death and have told stories of usually very pleasant and even joyful experiences at death’s door.
For many experiencers, their adventures seem unquestionably to provide evidence for life after death, and the profound effects the experience can have on them is just added confirmation. By contrast, for many scientists these experiences are just hallucinations produced by the dying brain and of no more interest than an especially vivid dream.
So which is right? Are near-death experiences (NDEs) the prelude to our life after death or the very last experience we have before oblivion? I shall argue that neither is quite right: NDEs provide no evidence for life after death, and we can best understand them by looking at neurochemistry, physiology, and psychology; but they are much more interesting than any dream. They seem completely real and can transform people’s lives. Any satisfactory theory has to understand that too—and that leads us to questions about minds, selves, and the nature of consciousness... |
Snip:
...You might think that such a theory has no place in science and ought to be ignored. I disagree. The only ideas that science can do nothing with are the purely metaphysical ones—ideas that have no measurable consequences and no testable predictions. But if a theory makes predictions, however bizarre, then it can be tested.
The theory of astral projection is, at least in some forms, testable. In the earliest experiments mediums claimed they were able to project their astral bodies to distant rooms and see what was happening. They claimed not to taste bitter aloes on their real tongues, but immediately screwed up their faces in disgust when the substance was placed on their (invisible) astral tongues. Unfortunately these experiments were not properly controlled (Blackmore 1982).
In other experiments, dying people were weighed to try to detect the astral body as it left. Early this century a weight of about one ounce was claimed, but as the apparatus became more sensitive the weight dropped, implying that it was not a real effect. More recent experiments have used sophisticated detectors of ultraviolet and infrared, magnetic flux or field strength, temperature, or weight to try to capture the astral body of someone having an out-of-body experience. They have even used animals and human "detectors," but no one has yet succeeded in detecting anything reliably (Morris et al. 1978).
If something really leaves the body in OBEs, then you might expect it to be able to see at a distance, in other words to have extrasensory perception (ESP). There have been several experiments with concealed targets. One success was Tart’s subject, who lay on a bed with a five-digit number on a shelf above it (Tart 1968). During the night she had an OBE and correctly reported the number, but critics argued that she could have climbed out of the bed to look. Apart from this one, the experiments tend, like so many in parapsychology, to provide equivocal results and no clear signs of any ESP.
So, this theory has been tested but seems to have failed its tests. If there really were astral bodies I would have expected us to have found something out about them by now—other than how hard it is to track them down!... |
She goes on to tell explain the thinking and the research that had been done up to that point.
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Randy
SFN Regular
USA
1990 Posts |
Posted - 09/14/2011 : 09:20:17 [Permalink]
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This topic brought to mind Arthur C. Clarke and his Discovery Channel series called The Mysterious Universe. One segment, now available to view on YouTube, is on near-death experiences.
Interesting program, especially when it comes around to military pilot centrifuge training and the identical NDE effects the exercise can create at the flip of a switch.
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"We are all connected; to each other biologically, to the earth chemically, to the rest of the universe atomically."
"So you're made of detritus [from exploded stars]. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?"
-Neil DeGrasse Tyson |
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Science disproves NDE's?
