Mega-thread for help with rebuttals against skeptical talking points

Just read an IMDB review of SD claiming that it presents a 'false medical fact' that a 'flatline ECG means brain death'. I looked this up and got this answer from Wikipedia:

It almost always refers to either a flatlined electrocardiogram, where the heart shows no electrical activity (asystole), or to a flat electroencephalogram, in which the brain shows no electrical activity (brain death). Both of these specific cases are involved in various definitions of death.

I imagine this was from the NDE episode, from Greyson or Fenwick, so this is probably to do with the quote from the series about the brain being unconscious during NDEs. I can't remember whether or not anything about ECGs was said during the episodes. Can anyone explain this to me so I can know whether or not to report this review?

Just read an IMDB review of SD claiming that it presents a 'false medical fact' that a 'flatline ECG means brain death'. I looked this up and got this answer from Wikipedia:


I imagine this was from the NDE episode, from Greyson or Fenwick, so this is probably to do with the quote from the series about the brain being unconscious during NDEs. I can't remember whether or not anything about ECGs was said during the episodes. Can anyone explain this to me so I can know whether or not to report this review?

No, don't report anything, just stop reading reviews .

On the topic of 'brain death' it is one of the ways in which modern determination of death is arrived at. The point is this, like Easter, is a moveable feast. In the old days, death was a simple matter, the heart stopped, end of story, dead. That was sufficient for centuries, millennia. But then along came CPR -  modern resuscitation techniques, which have been around since the mid 20th century, and improving all the time. Nowadays, as Dr Sam Parnia often says, death is not a moment, it is a process. Yet simultaneously, every day the 'time of death' is recorded on death certificates. Time of death is a practical necessity, it leads us back to death as a moment, though we know it is really a process.

Let's say we have a patient who in the past would simply be dead. But in modern times, we hook up the body to all sorts of machines and the body is kept alive. At what point do we decide to turn off the machines? This is a real ethical dilemma, and may even be subject to the judgement of a court of law, with rival arguments being presented. It also plays into another area, that of transplant surgery. In order to preserve organs in best condition for as long as possible, the body is kept on life support. But so long as the patient is kept alive in this way, the organs are not available for transplant. This leads to competing forces, the need to keep the patient alive to keep the organs healthy, and the need to turn off the machines to free up those 'spare parts' for transplant into some other patient. This may lead to keeping the body alive longer than necessary and also to undue haste and hurry to turn off the life-support. And somewhere in the midst of all that is the poor old patient, is he/she alive or dead?

Came across this in regards to someone comparing an experience after triple-bypass surgery with veridical NDEs:

Could be just a case of heightened senses. I had triple-bypass heart surgery 4 years ago and what was supposed to only take a few days to recover took me 2 1/2 weeks. The first week I was unconscious, most of the second week my hearing and eyesight were affected. My hearing to the point I could hear active conversations no normal person should have been able to from a distance and eyesight increased to the point I could see the texture of walls 14 to 16 feet away from me as if I were standing mere centimeters away from them, even finding the flaws in their painting. Both of which were confirmed by medical personnel...

Lungs were slowly filling with fluid and doctors couldn't do much to help. At one point there were so many machines I was hooked up to that there was hardly room for anything else. No one was sure I’d make it. Nothing about that time though suggests anything supernatural or paranormal, but more heightened senses beyond the everyday normal. Considering that if one is hit in the eye/s with a powerful light they can see inside their own eyeball then there is no reason IMO that our normal senses pushed to the extreme can’t sense things beyond THEIR normal limits.

Someone else pointed out that veridical NDEs occur during different conditions, and that they "happen during the height of the trauma WHILE unconscious". And of course, there are cases where they verify information outside of the room. Also, this person didn't describe any other features of an NDE. Are there any similarities or is this, as I suspect, a false equivalency?

Heightened senses as in psychic senses that allow you to see the operating table and surgical tools?

I don't understand how this relates to the veridica aspect unless he's talking about psychic powers.

Heightened senses as in psychic senses that allow you to see the operating table and surgical tools?

I don't understand how this relates to the veridica aspect unless he's talking about psychic powers.

He wasn't, he was referring to his senses somehow being heightened during surgery that 'explains' the veridical aspects as natural since he didn't experience consciousness leaving his body.

He wasn't, he was referring to his senses somehow being heightened during surgery that 'explains' the veridical aspects as natural since he didn't experience consciousness leaving his body.

Where is the comment from? Perhaps it makes sense in context.

Where is the comment from? Perhaps it makes sense in context.

I posted the full context. It was on a discussion on a forum on the topic of NDEs from several years ago. I've mentioned it before: the 'unexplained-mysteries forum'. When veridical NDEs were brought up, that was one of the responses.

If the comment is authentic and honest and lets assume it is, it sounds to me like the guy? was quite probably experiencing the often reported "abilities" which undoubtedly occur when patients are close to death, which he may well have been, and not actually realised it. Heart surgery patients regularly report out of body experiences etc, where they can see anything and everything close up and far away, even on the roof and up in the sky. This guy states that his lungs were filling up (shutting down) so he was in a precarious state. Nothing surprising about it based on the NDE literature.
 
If the guy is one of the old school of critical rationalism (many are) and prefers to discount anything "paranormal" and credit it to his regular physiological senses, then we have to allow that and wish him well. But we definitely don't need to worry about it.

I was trying to look up more info on this supposed recent 'crumb' of information from Parnia when I found this (which was bizarre since it isn't about the show, but rather includes some of the subjects):

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/.../?sort=top

Before you lose it, my main concern is that the top comment here actually cites a study which is supposedly evidence that 'brain activity precedes conscious thought' or something: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3625266/

They use this to claim that the radio analogy doesn't work because 'you'd expect the signal to precede the output' or something. Hence why I took this thread more seriously, since I'm not familiar with this argument:

If the brain merely "received" some immaterial (supernatural?) self, the physical actions should follow the mental ones. they do not. mental actions following physical ones is strong evidence that mental actions are the result of physical interactions.

The thread is basically started by some guy who 'doesn't believe there's a soul' anyways and argues that the effect of anaesthesia is evidence against it. Plenty even pointed out how flawed his argument is. I noticed someone referenced Kastrup's paper on brain correlations as well as a criticism of the ignorant OP.

I also saw this study from 2013 get cited in response to someone bringing up NDEs, but the skeptic who linked it quoted stuff from it that didn't match the conclusions-namely because on of the authors is Mario Beauregard. Saying things like 'the anecdotes of verified observations were too vague' and 'High CO2 levels were correlated with those describing to have had NDEs'. But this was very likely dishonest cherry-picking on their part, or an incorrect link. 

So going back to at least the first study, what do you think?