Well worth a listen. What she does here again is slip out of dealing properly with the data by suggesting it's not reliable or
it didn't really (actually) happen the way the cases were presented. Nicholls deals with her nicely while exposing her assumptions as simply wrong (such as her citing of Blanke's epileptic patient's out of body experience as comparable with those in NDE)
From her new book, she incorrectly reports the denture case (even though it is meticulously documented by Smit and Rivas on the net) and then finally makes it clear that even if something remarkable were happening (like a separate mind) there's nothing useful that can be done with it ("and then what" ..."and then what") because there's no mechanism. She wants to test the theory and make predictions about it by finding out what the soul is made of and measure it !
But when she wonders how this might be done, she's smart enough to realise that it's all silly nonsense. You can't measure the soul (fairy dust) so it must be dropped as a concept. And it all sounds very reasonable except she forgot to mention that she has previously said that she will accept any hits Parnia get's, if he does his experiments right. If that's the case, why call the outcome before the experiments have been properly put to the test ?
Of course it is inexplicable if it were true as
told – but is it? That is the question no one can
answer for sure and, like the Maria and Pam
Reynolds' cases, this one has been amply debated
(Craffert, 2015, French, 2005, Smit, 2008,
Woerlee, 2010, Smit & Rivas, 2010). What was his
brain state during resuscitation, both in the
ambulance and in hospital? Could this hypothermia
have contributed to preserving brain activity?
Exactly when were the dentures removed? What did
the crash cart really look like and how close was
his description? Could he have heard the nurse's
apparently distinctive husky voice during the
resuscitation and recognised him that way? So
long after the events consensus on any of these questions is impossible.
What are we to conclude about 'Dentures man'?
Rudolf Smit (2008) tried to 'set the record
straight' and provided the most thorough account
of the story so far. Smit is no avowed sceptic
but an NDE researcher and co-author of The Self
Does Not Die: Verified Paranormal Phenomena from
Near-Death Experiences (Rivas et al, 2016). Yet
he concluded , 'this case cannot constitute
definitive proof of continuation of
consciousness, let alone survival of death. But
it does provide corroborating testimony that
something extraordinary happened at the time, an
event that should not be dismissed out of hand as
a ridiculous story made up by naïve believers' (Smit, 2008, p. 61).
There are two interesting things about this
conclusion. The first is that even this case, so
often trumpeted as evidence for consciousness
beyond the brain, and used by van Lommel for that
purpose, does not stand up to careful scrutiny.
The second is that it reveals, even as late as
2008, that people still tend to think in terms of
just two opposing possibilities – that either the
story is true as told and is therefore amazing
evidence for souls, life after death or
consciousness without the brain, or is made up.
The most likely truth in this as in so many other
famous cases is neither of these. It is that
'Dentures man' really did have an out-of-body
experience, really did seem to see the room from
up near the ceiling and described it as
faithfully as he could but this, like every other
OBE we know about, was caused by the state of his
body and brain; not by his spirit leaving his
body. Yes, it was 'something extraordinary' and
no, it wasn't 'made up by naïve believers' but nor is it evidence for the soul.
Op blz. 296/297 (Chapter 17 – Back to That Night
in November) she says about her neurological
findings which, according to her offer an
explanation for NDE's and OBE's the following:
“These discoveries are a joy to me but quite the
opposite to others. […] It encourages me to keep
learning, keep meditating, and keep trying new
techniques and drugs. […] the more you learn the
more you realise how much you still don't know.
This is what so rarely happens in NDE research.
Again and again the arguments come back to
whether someone actually saw something they
should not have been able to see, or consciously
saw anything at all when their brain was silent.
And then what? Then, you might believe from
reading Morse, Parnia, Fenwick, Rivas or van
Lommel, we have 'proof' that the scientists are
all wrong, that materialist, reductionist (and
heartless and anti-spiritual?) Western scientific
paradigm must be overthrown. And then?
Then nothing. The 'new paradigm' and the 'visions
of a new science of consciousness' (Parnia &
Fenwick, 2002) are empty. We are told that a few
special cases prove the reality of the human soul
and its survival of bodily death, that memory is
stored outside of the brain and consciousness
does not depend on having a body. And then?
What do these new 'theories' predict? If I take
them seriously, I want to ask questions such as,
'What is the soul made of'. 'What capabilities
does it have and not have? And how can we find
out?', 'If memory is stored outside the brain,
how is it stored, and what does this tell us
about learning, forgetting, or retrieving old
memories?', 'What is consciousness and what is
left of it when the eyes and ears, visual and
auditory cortices, vestibular system and self-systems are all dead?'
And I get no answers. It is not that the research
has yet to be done, it is that these theories
don't tell us what research needs to be done.
They provide no predictions, no interesting
questions that can be answered with experiments,
and no ways of finding out which of them fits the
data better. Like the theory of astral projection, they are empty.”
it didn't really (actually) happen the way the cases were presented. Nicholls deals with her nicely while exposing her assumptions as simply wrong (such as her citing of Blanke's epileptic patient's out of body experience as comparable with those in NDE)
From her new book, she incorrectly reports the denture case (even though it is meticulously documented by Smit and Rivas on the net) and then finally makes it clear that even if something remarkable were happening (like a separate mind) there's nothing useful that can be done with it ("and then what" ..."and then what") because there's no mechanism. She wants to test the theory and make predictions about it by finding out what the soul is made of and measure it !
But when she wonders how this might be done, she's smart enough to realise that it's all silly nonsense. You can't measure the soul (fairy dust) so it must be dropped as a concept. And it all sounds very reasonable except she forgot to mention that she has previously said that she will accept any hits Parnia get's, if he does his experiments right. If that's the case, why call the outcome before the experiments have been properly put to the test ?
Of course it is inexplicable if it were true as
told – but is it? That is the question no one can
answer for sure and, like the Maria and Pam
Reynolds' cases, this one has been amply debated
(Craffert, 2015, French, 2005, Smit, 2008,
Woerlee, 2010, Smit & Rivas, 2010). What was his
brain state during resuscitation, both in the
ambulance and in hospital? Could this hypothermia
have contributed to preserving brain activity?
Exactly when were the dentures removed? What did
the crash cart really look like and how close was
his description? Could he have heard the nurse's
apparently distinctive husky voice during the
resuscitation and recognised him that way? So
long after the events consensus on any of these questions is impossible.
What are we to conclude about 'Dentures man'?
Rudolf Smit (2008) tried to 'set the record
straight' and provided the most thorough account
of the story so far. Smit is no avowed sceptic
but an NDE researcher and co-author of The Self
Does Not Die: Verified Paranormal Phenomena from
Near-Death Experiences (Rivas et al, 2016). Yet
he concluded , 'this case cannot constitute
definitive proof of continuation of
consciousness, let alone survival of death. But
it does provide corroborating testimony that
something extraordinary happened at the time, an
event that should not be dismissed out of hand as
a ridiculous story made up by naïve believers' (Smit, 2008, p. 61).
There are two interesting things about this
conclusion. The first is that even this case, so
often trumpeted as evidence for consciousness
beyond the brain, and used by van Lommel for that
purpose, does not stand up to careful scrutiny.
The second is that it reveals, even as late as
2008, that people still tend to think in terms of
just two opposing possibilities – that either the
story is true as told and is therefore amazing
evidence for souls, life after death or
consciousness without the brain, or is made up.
The most likely truth in this as in so many other
famous cases is neither of these. It is that
'Dentures man' really did have an out-of-body
experience, really did seem to see the room from
up near the ceiling and described it as
faithfully as he could but this, like every other
OBE we know about, was caused by the state of his
body and brain; not by his spirit leaving his
body. Yes, it was 'something extraordinary' and
no, it wasn't 'made up by naïve believers' but nor is it evidence for the soul.
Op blz. 296/297 (Chapter 17 – Back to That Night
in November) she says about her neurological
findings which, according to her offer an
explanation for NDE's and OBE's the following:
“These discoveries are a joy to me but quite the
opposite to others. […] It encourages me to keep
learning, keep meditating, and keep trying new
techniques and drugs. […] the more you learn the
more you realise how much you still don't know.
This is what so rarely happens in NDE research.
Again and again the arguments come back to
whether someone actually saw something they
should not have been able to see, or consciously
saw anything at all when their brain was silent.
And then what? Then, you might believe from
reading Morse, Parnia, Fenwick, Rivas or van
Lommel, we have 'proof' that the scientists are
all wrong, that materialist, reductionist (and
heartless and anti-spiritual?) Western scientific
paradigm must be overthrown. And then?
Then nothing. The 'new paradigm' and the 'visions
of a new science of consciousness' (Parnia &
Fenwick, 2002) are empty. We are told that a few
special cases prove the reality of the human soul
and its survival of bodily death, that memory is
stored outside of the brain and consciousness
does not depend on having a body. And then?
What do these new 'theories' predict? If I take
them seriously, I want to ask questions such as,
'What is the soul made of'. 'What capabilities
does it have and not have? And how can we find
out?', 'If memory is stored outside the brain,
how is it stored, and what does this tell us
about learning, forgetting, or retrieving old
memories?', 'What is consciousness and what is
left of it when the eyes and ears, visual and
auditory cortices, vestibular system and self-systems are all dead?'
And I get no answers. It is not that the research
has yet to be done, it is that these theories
don't tell us what research needs to be done.
They provide no predictions, no interesting
questions that can be answered with experiments,
and no ways of finding out which of them fits the
data better. Like the theory of astral projection, they are empty.”
![[-]](https://psiencequest.net/forums/images/collapse.png)