(March 18, 2015 at 9:34 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: No measurable brain activity occurs after 20 to 30 seconds of cardiac arrest, yet a small percentage of people report seeing and hearing things that actually occurred up to 3 minutes after cardiac arrest. The fact that some people can have complex cognitive functioning when cerebral activity is absent should at least give pause to those that think electro-chemical reactions are solely responsible for consciousness.
This comes from the most recent large scale study of NDEs:
AWARE Study 2014
The article mentions nothing about afterlife or consciousness surviving death, so I'm not going to say that it implies something it doesn't say. What the article does suggest is that NDE phenomena defy all mind-brain identity theories of consciousness. They are not even remotely comparable to delusions or hallucinations in terms of their clarity, complexity, and profound life-altering after effects.
Bad methodology. If we are separate from our brains and not simply our brains in motion, then it would not matter that our brains are physically in tact. Unless the study included 4 day old dead bodies, someone just decapitated, then there is no real control groups. In tact brains still can be damaged. And it still does not mean that no brain activity means dead, even with the brain your juice could also be flying under the radar. Clinical death can also mean merely a misdiagnosis on the doctors part, and or the equipment not picking up the vitals.
You wont get those same reports from vegetables where only the stem of the brain is functioning. They know this because they do pull that person back, simply not fully. If that were the case you could think and react only with your brain stem as well as if you had no damage at all.
Nothing "profound" about having an "oh shit" moment. Evolution drives us to continue, so when we go through that shutdown that is evolution last act of desperation, if you don't come back from that window, you stay dead. But yea, you come that close of course that kind of threat is may cause some to rethink. But like I said, I knew an atheist whose vitals could not be detected for a while after having a heart attack, they pulled him back, but he said he didn't remember a thing. I am sure some aspects of his life changed, maybe diet, spending more time with loved ones, but he still stayed an atheist.
All that is saying is people report things and change after they report those things. It still does not prove that we are separate from our brains. Doctors can fall for it too, and if some are motivated enough by greed they can get funding to concoct a fake "study" and have their samples already influenced by what their social norms were. So when they go through a heart stop or major brain event and get pulled from it, those samples already believed in it before they became subjects.
Electro chemical, no not just that, it also counts what their DNA is, and their lifetime of environmental input is including their religions and superstitions. There psychology also matters.
Ask a million Muslims if they believe in Allah, you might find different groups sure, but if someone is already pre disposed to the idea it is going to be easy for them to claim it after the fact.
Oh and that "study" talks about cardiac arrest which is the heart, not the brain. When your brain is deprived of oxygen it will suddenly dump like a file cabinet and that will cause your senses to mix and misfire, that process is what is causing those false sensations. They still are not real.
