NDE and afterlife

[Abaddon_ire]

I heard that scientists found that when people have NDE, they have literally zero brain activity, which means NDE can't be just a dream or wild imagination.

Had one. No biggie. You do realise the NDE stands for "Near Death Experience" i.e. not at all dead, right?

[Cod]

I heard that scientists found that when people have NDE, they have literally zero brain activity, which means NDE can't be just a dream or wild imagination.

Had one. No biggie. You do realise the NDE stands for "Near Death Experience" i.e. not at all dead, right?

I bet your socks were not on fire.

[Simon Moon]

And we're back with NDE claims.

Provide citation.

I saw your request for citation 30 minutes ago. I have been looking, and I swear I read it before. I just can't find it. I will let you know later. Sorry.

Here's a pro tip for you.

When you come to a forum to make a claim, where the vast majority of people use critical thinking to come to their beliefs and reject unsupported beliefs, you need to come with some ammunition to support your claim.

We are unlikely to believe a random theist on the internet, especially one with an obvious bias.

Did you really think that we'd just believe you without some evidence?

But lets say, for arguments sale, I accept your claim, that people with NDE's have zero brain activity. Please draw a logical connection (with valid and sound modus ponens) from; people with NDE's have zero brain activity, to, therefore god. I'll even make it easier for you, draw a logical connection (with valid and sound modus ponens) from; people with NDE's have zero brain activity, to, therefore the supernatural.

How did would you go about eliminating ALL other natural explanations? How would you even consider god to be a candidate explanation?

Because, from what I can tell, all you have is a classic argument from ignorance fallacy. "I can't come up with a natural explanation for how someone could have zero brain activity, be revived with interesting stories...therefore god (or soul)".

Sorry, but you not being able to come up with a natural explanation, offers zero evidence for a god or soul.

[Abaddon_ire]

Had one. No biggie. You do realise the NDE stands for "Near Death Experience" i.e. not at all dead, right?

I bet your socks were not on fire.

No socks in the operating theatre. 

[chimp3]

I am still wondering how all of these people having NDEs just happened to be hooked up to EEGs or PET scans?

[Brian37]

I am still wondering how all of these people having NDEs just happened to be hooked up to EEGs or PET scans?

Um aren't PET scans for cats and dogs?

[chimp3]

I am still wondering how all of these people having NDEs just happened to be hooked up to EEGs or PET scans?

Um aren't PET scans for cats and dogs?

Yes and EEGs are for eagles, egrets, and geckos.

[bennyboy]

I heard that scientists found that when people have NDE, they have literally zero brain activity, which means NDE can't be just a dream or wild imagination.

Wow, what deep investigative efforts you've made.

[chimp3]

Does "literally zero brain activity" mean you have zero brain activity when you are writing?

[robvalue]

I don’t see the point in spending the finite amount of time in the life trying to prove or disprove whether we somehow have "another life" afterwards, whatever that even means. We do or we don’t, and our beliefs or even knowledge about it won’t change the facts. If it turns out we don’t, it would seem to me to be an awful waste to allow fear of mortality to consume this finite existence.

Of course, if it’s mere curiosity, the by all means continue. Like I said, I don’t know what an "afterlife" is even meant to be. My consciousness is, by all accounts, an emergent property of my physical brain, and the concept of what makes me "me" is also linked to the rest of my physical body. Somehow grafting a part of me into some new vessel, or even having my consciousness somehow float about independent of anything to create it, is not really a continuation of this life. It’s some gross mad scientist-like experiment. I’d rather pass, I can’t think of anything more horrible.

If this is all supposed to be part of nature, then it contradicts just about everything about it we know so far and requires a huge list of extra assumptions just to get off the ground. If there’s some mental being doing all this to us, fucking around and splicing emergent processes onto other planes of existence for whatever reason, then we're all screwed. But luckily there’s no reason to think that’s the case.

Not every experience a brain produces relates very well to reality, that should be quite obvious. As the brain gets put under more and more stress, it becomes less and less reliable. Once you get to the point where it’s about to die, or even somehow ceases function but then starts again, it’s going to be hallucination central. Most importantly, the memory of how and when all the "experiences" occurred are going to be incredibly unreliable. Just think about how dreams work for a start. The experiences could be real, but it appears far more likely to assume they are the way we already know brains behave under such circumstances.

Anyhow, as always, I could be wrong. There could be some sort of new vessel waiting for us, for whatever reason. But since it appears there’s no way to study this reliably, nor can we do anything about it, it’s not much of a pressing issue.