PROOF of the Afterlife...for your Atheists out there

[_hatersinmyward]

I do believe in apperitions. It just makes me skeptical when money and the drug called fame are involved.

[_Jhall118]

I don't get why people cling to NDE's... those people weren't dead (obviously). All it shows is that we aren't very good at determining when someone is truly braindead.

Furthermore, controlled experiments HAVE shown that a lack of oxygen releases plenty of neurotransmitters that sufficiently explain the phenomena.

[_RayAgostini]

I don't get why people cling to NDE's... those people weren't dead (obviously). All it shows is that we aren't very good at determining when someone is truly braindead.

Furthermore, controlled experiments HAVE shown that a lack of oxygen releases plenty of neurotransmitters that sufficiently explain the phenomena.

It's not quite that simple. If you haven't done so, take some time to read the writings of one of the great skeptics, Dr. Susan Blackmore.

She retired from the study of parapsychology (in which she obtained her degree) many years ago, with this statement:

First Person - Into the Unknown (New Scientist, 4 November 2000, p 55)

Excerpt:

So why didn’t I give up then? There are lots of bad reasons. Admitting you are wrong is always hard, even though it's a skill every scientist needs to learn. And starting again as a baby in a new field is a daunting prospect. So is losing all the status and power of being an expert. I have to confess I enjoyed my hard-won knowledge. Yes, I have read Michael Faraday's 1853 report on table tipping, and the first 1930s studies in parapsychology, and the latest arguments over meta-analysis of computer-controlled ESP experiments, not to mention the infamous Scole report (Feedback, New Scientist, 22 January). Should I feel obliged to keep using this knowledge if I can? No. Enough is enough. None of it ever gets anywhere. That's a good enough reason for leaving.

But perhaps the real reason is that I am just too tired - and tired above all of working to maintain an open mind. I couldn’t dismiss all those extraordinary claims out of hand. After all, they might just be true, and if they were then swathes of science would have to be rewritten.

[_marg]

I don't get why people cling to NDE's... those people weren't dead (obviously). All it shows is that we aren't very good at determining when someone is truly braindead.

Furthermore, controlled experiments HAVE shown that a lack of oxygen releases plenty of neurotransmitters that sufficiently explain the phenomena.

I agree.

http://www.csicop.org/si/show/darkness_ ... and_light/

[_Chap]

More from Susan Blackmore:

Come to think of it, I feel slightly sad. It was just over thirty years ago that I had the dramatic out-of-body experience that convinced me of the reality of psychic phenomena and launched me on a crusade to show those closed-minded scientists that consciousness could reach beyond the body and that death was not the end. Just a few years of careful experiments changed all that. I found no psychic phenomena - only wishful thinking, self-deception, experimental error and, occasionally, fraud. I became a sceptic.

Dear me. Didn't she know that, um, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence?

At least the poor woman was not working on finding pre-Columbian horses for the Maxwell Institute ... now that really would have been a terrible fate.

[_Daheshist]

Celebrity Ghost Stories are NOT about NDEs (near death experiences). They are real actual experiences that the celebrities have had. If you Internet is fast you can view them. www.youtube.com and type in "Celebrity Ghost Stories".

[_RayAgostini]

Celebrity Ghost Stories are NOT about NDEs (near death experiences). They are real actual experiences that the celebrities have had. If you Internet is fast you can view them. http://www.youtube.com and type in "Celebrity Ghost Stories".

Sorry I misunderstood the title of your thread: "PROOF of the Afterlife...for your Atheists out there." (Emphasis added)