I don't look at near death experiences as evidence either . That is not proof that the soul or spirit continues indefinately without the physical body .I still believe in a resurrection that takes place at the time christs return in kingdom power .
What is Death?
by Blueblades 29 Replies latest jw friends
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tetrapod.sapien
I always ignored this memory because I was told it was just a dream (JWs don't like the idea of a separate spirit). When I left the dubs, this was one of the first subjects I researched, and found that many had had very similar experiences.
FMZ,
yes, many NDEs out there. and scientists are able to produce them, along with OBEs, in experiments. so there will be many more as we continue to study the phenomenon.
.I still believe in a resurrection that takes place at the time christs return in kingdom power
heathen,
really? or is this a joke ergo the little emotiocon?
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heathen
Not a joke, just my belief based on what the bible says . So what are you saying when you state that scientists are experimenting with NDE ? What idiot willingly allows themselves to almost be killed just to exsplore that ? I do remember the movie flatliners with kiefer southerland which was kinda like that . OBE is a little different since the apostle Paul seemed to believe in them as well , who knows how God communicated with all those visions and such ?
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tetrapod.sapien
:That is not proof that the soul or spirit continues indefinately without the physical body .I still believe in a resurrection that takes place at the time christs return in kingdom power .
heathen,
there is just as much "proof" for soul or spirit as there is for the resurrection. why the double standard?
:What idiot willingly allows themselves to almost be killed just to exsplore that ?
scientists have found that experimenting with weak electro-magnetic pulses to stimulate the right temporal lobe while the subject chants a mantra helps to produce OBEs [1]. they first started to understand the "religiosity" of temporal lobe epileptics. they then found that the parietal lobes where being silenced and the temporal lobe was "activated" during seizures. patients often describe great euphoria of heavenly hallucinations and even OBEs. they then extended these findings to subjects in the lab to test whether they were able to reproduce OBEs. so scientists have found that chanting and drumming produce the same effect of deactivating the parietal lobe somewhat (based on the brain scans of chanting buddhist monks and praying franciscan nuns), while stimulating the right temporal lobe produced OBEs. what is even more interesting is that they pegged OBEs on a continuum that NDEs also shared. they could also reproduce the same sort of reported NDE experiences with the same techniques in regular subjects. this would suggest that OBEs, NDEs are on the same continuum as the reported data from the lab are very close to the experiences from the field.
that is how they got idiots to cooperate with an experiment on NDEs and OBEs.
[1] Newberg, D' Aquili, Rause, 2002 -
heathen
I already stated that it was all matter of faith and based on religious beliefs . I couldn't say for sure that a spirit actually leaves the body at times of death . There may be a part that leaves the body but I don't believe it goes on to live such as going to heaven or hell . The whole experiement thing sounds kinda hokey to me as well . We've been round and round on the topic as well on the board .
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tetrapod.sapien
heathen,
ya, i bet it has been discussed.
The whole experiement thing sounds kinda hokey to me as well
if you say so, you should provide reasons for your finding it hokey. was it that i could have writen it better? or is there something in the methodology? i can re-write it if you like with more sources. let me know.edit: i just re-read my post, and it is not very coherent. it must have been rght before my nap. actually i believe it was. sorry about that. i will re-write it, and put it in a new thread.
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Mary
there is just as much "proof" for soul or spirit as there is for the resurrection. why the double standard?
Bingo........I always find it interesting that people who have NDE almost invaribly are met by deceased relatives during their experience. If it's just a hallucination, why is it so consistent that they're greated by others who have died? -
LouBelle
I don't know what I believe about this - obviously when your human body dies you become food for worms & maggots & all those other insects. Though my father has a very interesting concept. We live in a parallel world - yes very strange & he has his reasons & explanations but it's a hard one to swallow.
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heathen
I'm not going to rule out that the brain plays tricks with people at time of death . Science knows that the brain will call for a morphine like substance and perhaps causes it's own hallucinations .I still am very skeptical of the experiment . I believe in a resurrection only because I can prove it in the bible and no other reason cause I sure haven't seen anybody resurrected before . I have seen spirits in my life but never attributed it to seeing dead people . I believe in evil spirits .
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dh
sorry to bring this thread back to life, i didn't realise i had comments to reply...tetrapod said:
dh,
i'd like to know what sort of evidence you consider solid.
well, i have read of, and seen documentaries on television detailing people who 'claim' to remember past lives. to the extent where they know the way around isolated communities where only a person who was from there would know, and to the extent that they can identify people and places that they have never been or seen, one account details a person relaying their dying words (from their the past life) to the ONLY person who saw them die in that past life, and on and on... the 'evidence' is out there (ask mulder), but like anything, it takes time before the closed minds open up.
of course every word that i have read and program i have seen could be fake, but then so could the moon landings and everything in print or on screen, but i don't think it is fake. i think it is just not acceptable to talk about as a reality, the same as it didn't used to be acceptable to say the world was round.
you cannot liken a person who remembers people and events from a past life in detail, and proves it by identifying and interacting with those people and remembering events that only the dead person could know... to a schitzophrenic making up a world in their mind. since the person claiming the past life can be tested, and although a lot might be fake, as i said, there are enough that stand up to scrutiny for it to not be dismissed out of hand as most people do. with wt style reasoning... one is fake, they must all be fake!
i'm not an expert, and it's not a subject i spend a lot of time reading about so i cannot quote you loads of references, i can only say that through my life i have seen enough to be convinced that it probably does happen, i'm not out to sell the idea.
jaffacake said:
plenty of evidence out there to support some type life after death, even if it's just coming back here as someone else
Although I try to have an open mind on this subject I am amazed by this comment, if there has ever been any evidence whatsoever, then why has it never been presented. Frankly, even the tiniest scrap of evidence would be front page headlines in every newspaper in the world for months. There are plenty of claims and assertions, which some people describe as evidence. (see 120 years of watchtowers).
you might be surprised, throughout history in the scientific world, unacceptable ideas are scoffed at, and laughed at, not put easily into print for all to see. the powers that be have big ego's and reputations based on what they 'know' to be true, so they are hardly going to say 'hey, let's re-examine our entire understanding of this and undermine everything we have built our careers on'... so no, the evidence would not make any headlines, but that evidence is out there, if you look. look for life after death stories. kids who are born and track down relatives from past lives, people who remember things that only the dead person could have known.
i know (i read) there was a study conducted in the 50's by a dr. ian stevenson of the medical school in charlottesville, virginnia regarding past life recalls, the results of which were published in the us in the 60's. not sure where mind you, but i got the reference from a chapter of a book a read (ancient traces by michael baigent). the study looked at hundreds of these stories, and cut out the ones which were clearly crap, and narrowed it down to those which stood up to intense scrutiny... make of that what you will, look it up if you care to, dismiss it if you want to, i read about it.
anyway, like i said, i'm not selling the idea, only saying that the evidence and the people are out there, and to say 'hey, all of that is bs because i just don't believe it', is a normal response, but it's pretty narrow minded.
edited to add this which i just googled about the dr. i mentioned earlier: http://www.near-death.com/experiences/reincarnation01.html
Dr. Ian Stevenson The Pioneer of Reincarnation Research Ian Stevenson is the former head of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, and now is Director of the Division of Personality Studies at the University of Virginia. He has devoted the last 40 years to the scientific documentation of past life memories of children from all over the world and has over 3000 cases in his files. Many people, including skeptics and scholars, agree that these cases offer the best evidence yet for reincarnation.
Dr. Stevenson’s research into the possibility of reincarnation began in 1960 when he heard of a case in Sri Lanka where a child claimed to remember a past life. He thoroughly questioned the child and the child's parents, as well as the people whom the child claimed were his parents from his past life. This led to Dr. Stevenson’s conviction that reincarnation was possibly a reality. The more cases he pursued, the greater became his drive to scientifically open up and conquer an unknown territory among the world's mysteries, which until now had been excluded from scientific observation. Nonetheless, he believed he could approach and possibly furnish proof of its reality with scientific means.
In 1960, Dr. Stevenson published two articles in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research about children who remembered past lives. In 1974, he published his book, Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation , and became well known wherever this book appeared by those people who already had a long-standing interest in this subject. They were pleased to finally be presented with such fundamental research into reincarnation from a scientific source. In 1997, Dr. Stevenson published his work entitled Reincarnation and Biology . In the first volume, he mainly describes birthmarks - those distinguishing marks on the skin which the newborn baby brings into the world and cannot be explained by inheritance alone. In his second volume, Dr. Stevenson focuses mainly on deformities and other anomalies that children are born with and which cannot be traced back to inheritance, prenatal or perinatal (created during birth) occurrences. This monumental piece of work contains hundreds of pictures documenting the evidence.
During his original research into various cases involving children's memories of past lives, Dr. Stevenson did note with interest the fact that these children frequently bore lasting birthmarks which supposedly related to their murder or the death they suffered in a previous life. Stevenson's research into birthmarks and congenital defects has such particular importance for the demonstration of reincarnation, since it furnishes objective and graphic proof of reincarnation, superior to the - often fragmentary - memories and reports of the children and adults questioned, which even if verified afterwards cannot be assigned the same value in scientific terms.
In many cases presented by Dr. Stevenson there are also medical documents available as further proof, which are usually compiled after the death of the person. Dr. Stevenson adds that in the cases he researched and "solved" in which birthmarks and deformities were present, he didn't suppose there was any other apposite explanation than that of reincarnation. Only 30% - 60% of these deformities can be put down to birth defects which related to genetic factors, virus infections or chemical causes (like those found in children damaged by the drug Thalidomide or alcohol). Apart from these demonstrable causes, the medical profession has no other explanation for the other 40% to 70% of cases than that of mere chance. Stevenson has now succeeded in giving us an explanation of why a person is born with these deformities and why they appear precisely in that part of their body and not in another.