Death is the end

Excellent ! Are you Jason Braithwaite ? Yes I've had an email exchange with Jason, if that's you, is it  ? If it is, welcome ! but please don't make disgusting remarks about certain people deceased.  (I'll assume you're not though).

He asserts that he has refuted both Michael Sabom and Pim Van Lommel.

His main 'argument' is that there might still be some deep rooted brain activity, un-measurable on the cortical level, sufficient to enable these experiences to occur. (yes, why not when there's nothing else to say )  The data on this, however is very clear. In cardiac arrest, global electrical activity is lost within a maximum of 10-20-30 seconds. (average 15)

What he has conveniently overlooked is that as soon as the heart stops pumping, the brainstem stops functioning. Without a brainstem, it doesn't matter about anything above it, the whole brain is off line. No deep structures still providing some (sceptical get out) back up function.  

Jason is a psychologist (not an MD) so I'm assuming he pretends he doesn't know that... and creatively 'feeds' fellow sceptics like you (are you a guy ?) with what you want to hear. And clearly you swallow it.

I'm not an expert BTW (neither is Braithwaite on this stuff)

There is some info here on brain stem death:

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Brain-death...ction.aspx

In Dr Braithwaite's paper that I linked to he does not refer to the brainstem.

As far as I know there is no report of total brainstem death whilst a patient experiencing an NDE... if such a thing ever happened I think we would all know about it by now.

No I am not Jason J. Braithwaite. I have spoken to him now and again. He is a member on the internationalskeptics forum.

His publications are here:

http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/psychology/pe...raithwaite

C'mon the guy knows what he is talking about! He knows all about the human brain, studying it is his life. He might not be MD but he has PhD. He works at the Behavioural Brain SciencesCentre, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham. He knows far more about the brain than laymen like you or me.

If you think entire brain function is totally offline whilst someone is experiencing an NDE it is your job to prove it. No such evidence exists.

Dante, I started this thread to ask proponents a simple question, not really the other way round. I am not really interested in philosophical mumbo jumbo myself or answering questions about an afterlife, I do not believe in an afterlife, my position is non-belief so I choose to ask proponents the questions. The burden of proof is on you guys to provide the evidence for your beliefs not the other way round.

It is clear from mainstream science that there is no afterlife. Microbes, bacteria, insects dying in nature every second every minute, nobody seems to care about those. It is human bias from religion, a perverted anthropomorphic world-view to why certain humans believe in an afterlife. Proponents of this afterlife hypothesis fear death and erroneously believe they are 'important' or above nature and somehow and deserve a magical afterlife. I do not choose to discuss the pro and cons of 'afterlife' research, would be a futile task. I was more interested in how proponents would change if they came to realise there was no afterlife.

Tim for example stated " I don't see how humans could or would be able to complete their lives satisfactorily" if they know beyond doubt death is the end. I am trying to figure out why you guys believe this? Proponents seem to strongly bank on an afterlife existing. Their belief in it seems to shape what they do in the now. That is something I do not understand.

I cannot demonstrate this statement with evidence so this one is a speculation from me, but I believe one other possible reason people believe in an afterlife is because they have not achieved much in their life. In conclusion I bottle it down to several types of people who believe in an afterlife:

1. Those brainwashed by religion or anthropomorphic belief systems
2. Those who are unhappy, ill or have not achieved much with their lives
3. Elderly people who fear death

Do you agree with any of this?

Where to begin... 

I have little motivation to even respond to this, because you commit so many obvious logical and other kinds of fallacies, and make blatant blanket assertions without supporting them in any way, and on top of it you are obviously dogmatic and unmoving (which is, you know, not ideal). But... I'll give it a whirl.

Dante, I started this thread to ask proponents a simple question, not really the other way round. I am not really interested in philosophical mumbo jumbo myself or answering questions about an afterlife, I do not believe in an afterlife, my position is non-belief so I choose to ask proponents the questions. The burden of proof is on you guys to provide the evidence for your beliefs not the other way round.

 

And you got answers, and then you addressed my post specifically, I responded, you responded, here we are. People are providing that evidence all over this forum. Go engage in discussion on it. I directly addressed you regarding the reincarnation research, and you ran for the hills. You didn't even attempt to discuss it, even after I made a dedicated thread in the SvP subforum as you requested. The evidence is all over this forum, but you've been otherwise occupied and seem disinterested and completely uninformed about some of the "afterlife" evidence, based on your posts in the reincarnation thread and here.

It is clear from mainstream science that there is no afterlife. Microbes, bacteria, insects dying in nature every second every minute, nobody seems to care about those. It is human bias from religion, a perverted anthropomorphic world-view to why certain humans believe in an afterlife. Proponents of this afterlife hypothesis fear death and erroneously believe they are 'important' or above nature and somehow and deserve a magical afterlife. I do not choose to discuss the pro and cons of 'afterlife' research, would be a futile task. I was more interested in how proponents would change if they came to realise there was no afterlife.

This one is a doozy. What in mainstream science makes that clear? More of the same from you Leuders, assertions and statements with no support in the form of statements or evidence (this one is just point blank false). What on earth is your point about microbes, bacteria and insects? If they have consciousness in some capacity we would have no more way of knowing about its afterlife than we do our own... no idea what point you're attempting to make with that. It's not based on religion, since there are plenty of people who believe in it (many members of this forum, to one degree or another) who aren't followers of any sort of religion, including some who particularly dislike it. The "fear death" thing is just a sad excuse created by people like you to completely and outright dismiss evidence without actually engaging it. It has no merit. I, and I'm sure others here (and literally all over the place in the world) who believe in an afterlife, don't believe I'm "above nature" (whatever that means - again you're assuming nature has to be reductive) or that I deserve a "magical" (so sophisticated of you) afterlife. I believe what I believe because I'm curious about the question, as many, though apparently not you, are, and I found that the evidence is impressive and significant in my opinion.  You are correct, it would be futile, because unless and until you find a way to be less utterly dogmatic and trapped in your single-dimensional worldview there's no point in discussion. You're simply not reasonable or open-minded with a statement like that, which is critical to a balanced analysis of the evidence that you aren't even familiar with. 

What do you mean you were interested in how proponents would change if they came to realize (the same almighty, illuminated) knowledge that you possess? Were you expecting this thread to effectively elucidate that for you?

Tim for example stated " I don't see how humans could or would be able to complete their lives satisfactorily" if they know beyond doubt death is the end. I am trying to figure out why you guys believe this? Proponents seem to strongly bank on an afterlife existing. Their belief in it seems to shape what they do in the now. That is something I do not understand.

For starters, because it's important to actually acknowledge the implications of the worldview you presented in the OP, which you do not. That would be why many people believe that. It isn't about banking on the afterlife existing, though it's become clear that you just don't understand anything beyond basic internet skeptical debunking and cursory, uninformed dismissals of evidence (that, again, you aren't familiar with and haven't looked into - because you already know the answer). It's odd to you that what someone believes shapes what they do? That's a novel concept?

I cannot demonstrate this statement with evidence so this one is a speculation from me, but I believe one other possible reason people believe in an afterlife is because they have not achieved much in their life. In conclusion I bottle it down to several types of people who believe in an afterlife:

1. Those brainwashed by religion or anthropomorphic belief systems
2. Those who are unhappy, ill or have not achieved much with their lives
3. Elderly people who fear death

This is the one you can't demonstrate with evidence that is speculative? Not the other 10 points you made that are completely unsupported? Alright, just checking.

Well, let's see. Like Brian (and probably a lot of others), I fit into none of those categories even remotely.

1. I'm not particularly religious, certainly not brainwashed, and am confident that I have a better of what an anthropomorphic belief system entails than you do;

2. I am beyond happy with my life and pretty much always have been, and think I've achieved quite a bit for my age;

3. Not even close.

Do you agree with any of this?

I know I just answered this, but in the event that you don't read all the way through what I wrote: no, no I don't agree with it. 

Again, thank you for making crystal clear your approach to things. It's been illuminating.

There is some info here on brain stem death:

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Brain-death...ction.aspx

In Dr Braithwaite's paper that I linked to he does not refer to the brainstem.

As far as I know there is no report of total brainstem death whilst a patient experiencing an NDE... if such a thing ever happened I think we would all know about it by now.

No I am not Jason J. Braithwaite. I have spoken to him now and again. He is a member on the internationalskeptics forum.

His publications are here:

http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/psychology/pe...raithwaite

C'mon the guy knows what he is talking about! He knows all about the human brain, studying it is his life. He might not be MD but he has PhD. He works at the Behavioural Brain SciencesCentre, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham. He knows far more about the brain than laymen like you or me.

If you think entire brain function is totally offline whilst someone is experiencing an NDE it is your job to prove it. No such evidence exists.

"In Dr Braithwaite's paper that I linked to he does not refer to the brainstem."

Jeez.. and why do you think that is ? I'll give you a hint, because if he did refer to it, his so called "refutation" of Van Lommel's paper would be even weaker than it is now.

Thanks for the link BTW which proves to me (with gold knobs on) you don't have a clue what you're discussing here. You've just shot yourself in the foot.

 How brain death occurs
Brain death can occur when the blood and/or oxygen supply to the brain is stopped. This can be caused by:

• cardiac arrest – when the heart stops beating and the brain is starved of oxygen
  

If you look at the bolded word cardiac arrest, this criteria was met in Van Lommel's study. In cardiac arrest, the brainstem
ceases to function within seconds and that's why doctors can intubate patients and they don't gag, they can shine a light on the pupils of the eye and they don't react...there is nothing going on in the brain. There isn't some deep rooted brain activity as proposed by Brathwaite. When the brainstem stops that's it.  You can't have any consciousness without a brain stem (admits arch sceptic GM Woerlee who I have had many, many exchanges with)

Braithwaite is a psychologist (probably a good one too) but he is not on a par with MD's who have carried out detailed long term prospective studies on real patients. He probably spent less than 10 hours on his "paper, " Van Lommel spent more than 10 years !

I am a lay person, I've never pretended otherwise but I'm not publishing papers or making claims. I'm simply reiterating the words of the doctors that have and like any one else I am entitled to do that.  

 Leuders said > If you think entire brain function is totally offline whilst someone is experiencing an NDE it is your job to prove it. No such evidence exists

Proof is only available in mathematics. Your (own goal) link should answer that question for you or you can listen to the words of possibly the foremost brain function expert (it's debateable of course) Peter Fenwick.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlXK68tMm7Y  Go to 8.31

I just want to add that I entirely understand Jason Braithwaite's position regarding the meaning and interpretation of NDE.
He would lose his job and grant funding if he said anything different.

As you know I don't accept that at all... those figures only really apply to the cortex, and really only when measuring with EEG. We know from iEEG measurements firing can continue for longer in the cortex, depending on what causes (or does not cause) the firing. And we know different cells, often in deeper brain structures, can continue firing for around 5 minutes. We also know these times can be extended during CPR, and in lower temperatures.

But that said, I totally accept that the EEG measurements from the cortex, which are generally accepted as being needed for a functioning brain in a human are gone by 30 seconds. Which is a very big problem for current theories about how the brain works.

When the brain stem goes down (as in cardiac arrest) the whole brain is non functional. There might be a few cells still with some electrical potential across them but that's not going to do what you need it to do.

You see that's another example that shows you don't understand my ideas Tim.

It's entirely possible in my view, that as a persons EM field fails, it might lead to some sort of expansion of experience in spacetime, until at some fundamental point spacetime (3+1) disappears, and existence is now something else... say 2+2. (Three dimensional space, and one dimensional time becomes two, two dimensional surfaces).

That might mean everything arrives at 2+2 together. It wouldn't matter when one dies in 3+1... it all arrives together as 2+2 anyway. Existence becomes 2+2 for you, together with somebody who died 10,000 years ago, and somebody who will die 10,000 years in the future.

I have not a clue what that existence might be like though...

I don't understand that, you're right Max. Leaving that aside what is it that survives in your view? Is it something with an identity or just a kind of reflection ?

Your changing your position here, you said something much more specific, that "...in cardiac arrest, global electrical activity is lost within a maximum of 10-20-30 seconds. (average 15)...".

That statement isn't correct, those figures only really apply to the cortex, and really only when measuring with EEG, it does not apply globally... (I won't repeat what I stated above)

This new statement "..the whole brain is non functional.." is vaguer to me. From some perspectives it could be though of as correct (i.e. without new resources cells will eventually start dying), but from others it's not, because all the cells are still doing their own thing... Sure the brain ain't functioning how we would expect on an everyday basis. But we've got a suggestion from AWARE, of awareness during cardiac arrest, suggesting once again that we don't understand the brain very well, and tonnes of other reports and studies that this is almost certainly the case.

My position hasn't changed, Max. I just let you have a few brain cells with electrical potential across them to keep you happy.   It's unfalsifiable so there's no point in arguing about it really.