Today Show Sybill Shepherd and NDEs

[Brian37]

I didn't catch the opening of the interview but started paying attention when I realized who it was. Some may remember her character on the show Moonlighting. Maddie, her character, is a small peice of the road to my atheism. There was one scene where after they couldn't figure out how a magician in one episode seemingly "came back from the dead", were arguing, like they do in every epsode, back at the office.

In the scene David says somthing like ".....God.....there you go, everyone believes in him......" And Maddie sat stone faced not responding to him because her character didn't believe. I have to thank the writers of that show for fostering my doubt.

Jump forward to today, litterally the show and this morning. So she's like every other actress on the show to promote something she is doing. I missed what she was talking aobut but talked about NDEs.

I have not ever been clinically dead (although some here might wish that on me), but I have had the false sensation of seeing the dead in my sleep. I have also had the false sensation of "floating out of my body". But that is all they are, false sensations. These can be caused by mere stress, chemical imbalance, and or brain injury or mental illness.

What makes NDEs stupic claims is that those who claim it have in tact brains who "come back". "Near" does not mean "beyond". Even doctors can fall for this crap. If you have juice in you(enough activity) that is all it takes to jolt someone back. Not dectecting motion only makes someone clinically dead. If you are still in that window and come back, it merely means you didn't go beyond that window. Funny how all those claiming this have in tact brains. Funny how someone who has had their brains blown out by a gun, or decapitated never have this same "experience".

Once your brain dies you die. You are nothing more than your brain in motion. Destroy the structure there is no more you.

[Mister Agenda]

I've been clinically dead under anaesthesia while having my heart rebuilt and all I got was lost time.

[robvalue]

Right. I had a "debate" about this a while back. I stated that there's two possible definitions of "being dead" and neither of them support a NDE meaning anything.

1) You cannot come back to life.
2) A set of tests or read outs where you are declared "dead" given certain conditions.

If someone comes back to life, then definition 1 is wrong, so it must be definition 2. That means that whatever parameters you've set in place, they aren't sufficient to distinguish someone who can't come back to life from someone who can. Therefor your definition of "death" is arbitrary and so "coming back from the dead" is also meaningless.

[Faith No More]

Proponents of NDE's completely ignore the nature of perception and the fact that our consciousness is entirely dependent upon biological factors such as blood flow and the chemical structure of the brain. When the human body starts the process of death the whole body goes out of whack, including the brain. One would expect that a conscious experience of the shutting down of the body would lead the mind to perceive things completely out of line with reality. To say it is a supernatural experience denies our understanding of how the brain processes information.

That being said, I have a friend who had an NDE and said he experienced pretty much nothing.

[Brian37]

Moonlighting was one of my favorite shows. It is actually a small piece on my road to my atheist position.

There was one episode where a magician seemed to defy death. As David and Maddie did on every episode argued over everything. So they get back to the office not understanding how the dead guy got out of the coffin they were paid to protect.

David said something like "God......well.....there you go.......everyone believes in him"............Maddie sat stone faced because she was an atheist. It was one of the earliest depictions of doubt I can remember. I was still a believer at that time, but it helped me ditch the fear of having to belong to a club and follow a ritual. I was still stupid compared to today.

In that same episode Maddie was backstage talking to an old guy(stage hand) and he said "If people didn't have eyes to see with they would not be so easily fooled". On top of the argument in the office, in that episode, that too had a very profound affect on me.

When people claim to see the dead or claim to have come back from the dead, those are REAL experiences, but real only in the context that humans gap fill to explain them. The REAL reason people have them is mundane and not sexy at all. They are caused by mere stress, chemical imbalance, oxygen deprivation to the brain, disease, emotional trauma, and brain injury.

I hate the term "NDE" there is a reason it is called "Near" because it is not "beyond". Not detecting motion only means you flew under the radar. If you come back, that means there was enough juice(undetected motion) to jolt you back. There is no coming back from death once you get beyond that window. Once our cells are damaged beyond repair you do not come back.

---

Proponents of NDE's completely ignore the nature of perception and the fact that our consciousness is entirely dependent upon biological factors such as blood flow and the chemical structure of the brain. When the human body starts the process of death the whole body goes out of whack, including the brain. One would expect that a conscious experience of the shutting down of the body would lead the mind to perceive things completely out of line with reality. To say it is a supernatural experience denies our understanding of how the brain processes information.

That being said, I have a friend who had an NDE and said he experienced pretty much nothing.

These idiots never want to hear from atheists whose hearts stop for a long time but don't report the same thing.

It is a delusion, not a reality.

---

Back in the late 90s I attended as an atheist, a Unitarian Church. One black guy, also a Vietnam vet, came up to me after one service and admitted he was an atheist too, also told me he had a heart attack and his heart was stopped for some time, but the doctors revived him, said he didn't feel anything the entire time. It all depends on the individual and their brain activity at the time.

[Brian37]

I don't even like si fi or budhist crap justifying any type of giant cognition, limited in power or a deity.

Humans stupidly project their species qualities on non living things. No one argues eternity for bacteria or cockroaches.

There are even si fi idiots thinking a mere wave because it leads to mass then material can act the same way as the in tact structure. It is like treating gas as if it were both the gas and the entire car.

QM does not justify "all this" being a cognition. Our patterns are at a macro level and require a certain structure for our cognition to happen. I am certainly happy to know that my atoms are 14 billion years old, and that after I die my atoms will move on to other things. But my cognition will not.

I have not lost my sense of awe by accepting my finite blip of an existence in all this. Once you know the amazing history of this planet it is amazing that we are even here. One event here or one event there being slightly different and we could have very easily not happened at all. If that meteor that killed the dinosaurs had not happened evolution would have played out differently. And there was even one point scientists say were our current form dwindled as low as 2,000.

All this to me is fucking awesome to think about without trying to put non human qualities on it.

[DeistPaladin]

I remember seeing this one TV show, I forget which one, where a character died and came back by some plot device technology. The scripted conversation between characters I remember went something like this:

"It was probably just a hallucination, like most NDEs."

"No, there was no 'near death' about it. You were flatlining."

I understood this was a work of fiction but my over-analytic brain couldn't help but start asking questions.

"If you were brain dead, how could you 'see' and 'hear' anything since the senses are filtered and interpreted through the brain?"

"...and even if you could see and hear anything, how could you remember what you saw or heard, since memories are stored in the brain? Anything you experienced, even assuming consciousness exists independent of the brain, should be lost since you had nowhere to store that memory for later access."

"...and if somehow this soul-stuff remembers anything, how come we can't use that when the brain is damaged?"

[Brian37]

I remember seeing this one TV show, I forget which one, where a character died and came back by some plot device technology. The scripted conversation between characters I remember went something like this:

"It was probably just a hallucination, like most NDEs."

"No, there was no 'near death' about it. You were flatlining."

I understood this was a work of fiction but my over-analytic brain couldn't help but start asking questions.

"If you were brain dead, how could you 'see' and 'hear' anything since the senses are filtered and interpreted through the brain?"

"...and even if you could see and hear anything, how could you remember what you saw or heard, since memories are stored in the brain? Anything you experienced, even assuming consciousness exists independent of the brain, should be lost since you had nowhere to store that memory for later access."

"...and if somehow this soul-stuff remembers anything, how come we can't use that when the brain is damaged?"

BINGO, if "we" were separate from our brains, then "we" should be able to communicate right after sticking a shotgun in our mouths and blowing our heads off. Funny how that never happens in reality. And no kids, DO NOT TRY THAT AT HOME, or anywhere for that matter.

---

I love thinking about our reality as we scientifically know it. Gravity affecting time freaks me out. The fact that color is not in the object but in light which some of it gets absorbed and what you see is what bounces off it into your eye. And everything you think is solid is 99% empty space on the atom level. Neutrinos are freaky too.

What I simply do not do is think non human things have human qualities.

[DeistPaladin]

BINGO, if "we" were separate from our brains, then "we" should be able to communicate right after sticking a shotgun in our mouths and blowing our heads off.

How do you figure that?

Sorry, not trying to be difficult, as I share your skepticism, but any time someone says to me "If X then necessarily Y", my brain is immediately challenged to come up with alternatives. It only took a split-second to respond with "...unless of course we can't." Consciousness doesn't presuppose the ability to communicate.

[Foxaèr]

I only remember her from the show named after her.