The whole idea of the "Soul" - nonsense?

I didn't say that because the universe has a design, there must by neccessity have been a designer. But, I find no reason within the universe for there to be a design, and I find God to be a reasonable explanation for a design.

Josephus wrote:

The concept of the soul seems to have come down to us from Plato who, as a lover of geometry, hated the idea that geometric figures prevented us from seeing or understanding the common concept that ties each of those figures together.

Plato's Testimony of a Soldier Named Er and His NDE

Reports of near-death experiences are not a new phenomenon. A great number of them have been recorded over a period of thousands of years. The ancient religious texts such as The Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Bible, and Koran describe experiences of life after death which remarkably resembles modern NDEs. The oldest surviving explicit report of a NDE in Western literature comes from the famed Greek philosopher, Plato, who describes an event in his tenth book of his legendary book entitled Republic. Plato discusses the story of Er, a soldier who awoke on his funeral pyre and described his journey into the afterlife. But this story is not just a random anecdote for Plato. He integrated at least three elements of the NDE into his philosophy: the departure of the soul from the cave of shadows to see the light of truth, the flight of the soul to a vision of pure celestial being and its subsequent recollection of the vision of light, which is the very purpose of philosophy.

In Plato's Republic, he concludes his discussion of immortal soul and ultimate justice with the story of Er. Traditional Greek culture had no strong faith in ultimate justice, as monotheistic faiths do. Ancestral spirits lingered in the dark, miserable underworld, Hades, regardless of their behavior in this life, with no reward or punishment, as Odysseus learned in his Odyssey. But Plato, perhaps importing some Orphic, Egyptian or Zoroastrian themes, drew on the idea of an otherworldly reward or punishment to motivate virtuous behavior in this life. The first point of Er's story is to report on this cosmic justice; it is:

"..the tale of a warrior bold, Er, the son of Armenious, by race a Pamphylian. He once upon a time was slain in battle, and when the corpses were taken up on the tenth day already decayed, he was found intact, and having been brought home, at the moment of his funeral, on the twelfth day as he lay upon the pyre, revived, and after coming to life related what, he said, he had seen in the world beyond. He said that when his soul went forth from his body he journeyed with a great company and that they came to a mysterious region where there were two openings side by side in the earth, and above and over against them in the heaven two others, and that judges were sitting between these, and that after every judgment they bade the righteous journey to the right and upward through the heaven with tokens attached to them in front of the judgment passed upon them, and the unjust to take the road to the left and downward, they too wearing behind signs of all that had befallen them, and that when he himself drew near they told him that he must be the messenger to humanity to tell them of that other world, and they charged him to give ear and to observe everything in the place." (Rep. X,614 b,c,d)

From the other tunnels came souls preparing for reincarnation on earth. From above came souls happily reporting "delights and visions of a beauty beyond words." From below came souls lamenting and wailing over a thousand years of dreadful sufferings, where people were repaid manifold for any earthly suffering they had caused. Journeying on, the newcomers saw:

"..extended from above throughout the heaven and the earth, a straight light like a pillar, most nearly resembling the rainbow, but brighter and purer ... and they saw there at the middle of the light the extremities of its fastenings stretched from heaven, for this light was the girdle of the heavens like the undergirders of triremes, holding together in like manner the entire revolving vault." (Rep. X, 616 b,c)

The cosmic axis is a rainbow light holding together the eight spheres revolving around the earth, each guided by its Fate, a daughter of Necessity. One of these Fates casts before the crowd to be reincarnated a number of earthly destinies from which they may choose to be, for example, a tyrant, an animal, an artist, or, as Odysseus carefully chose, an ordinary citizen who minds his own business. Then, just before returning to earth as a shooting star, each soul is required to drink from the River of Forgetfulness, so that all these cosmic events will fade from memory. Only Er was not allowed to drink and forget.

Thus Plato's cosmology is framed in the story of a NDE, although it obviously has been elaborated beyond an individual account into a collective cosmology. This amazing vision of the universal light, immortal soul, reward and punishment, reincarnation and even tunnels, is echoed 2500 years later in our contemporary NDE reports.

Plato's allegory of the cave in the Republic similarly reflects the centrality of the cosmic light of wisdom. Chained inside a cave, looking at a wall dancing with shadowy figures, residents take there figments to be reality:

"Such prisoners would deem reality to be nothing else than the shadows of the artificial objects."

But then one prisoner is freed and, climbing out of the cave with dazzled eyes, discovers the blazing sun and the true world that it floods with light.

"When one was freed from his fetters and compelled to stand up suddenly and turn his head around and walk and to lift up his eyes to the light, and in doing all this felt pain and, because of the dazzle and glitter of the light, was unable to discern the objects whose shadows he formerly saw, what do you suppose would be his answer if someone told him that what he had seen before was all a cheat and an illusion, but that now, being nearer to reality and turned toward more real things, he saw more truly?" (Rep. VII,515 c,d)

Plato uses the image to convey the soul's philosophical awakening to the realm of archetypal forms. Several parallels with NDE reports stand out. The shock of the discovery through the light, reversing all previous convictions, echoes loudly the experiencers' radical shift in consciousness. When the wanderer returns to the cave and attempts to awaken his mates to the true light, he provokes laughter and even death threats:

"And if it were possible to lay hands on and to kill the man who tried to release them and lead them up, would they not kill him?" (Rep. VII, 517a)

This reference to Socrates' death reflects the pain of misunderstanding and rejection felt by survivors of a NDE, and the subsequent difficulty adjusting to the ordinary world of shadows. The returning bearer of visionary discoveries is despised for upsetting the cave's established order.

The flight of the immortal soul toward an incredible vision of pure celestial being, Plato describes in the Phaedrus. Drawn out by love and beauty, the soul is carried as on a chariot pulled by two eager steeds, upward to join a magnificent circular parade of souls (the Milky Way), each following the Greek god it most favors (Ares for warriors, Zeus for wise leaders, Hera for royalty, etc.) All parade around the cosmic cycle, straining for a view of pure being in the center. Those who see more of it are reincarnated with more memory of the universal forms of pure truth, justice, beauty, temperance and love:

"..every human soul has, by reason of her nature, had contemplation of true being; else would she never have entered into this human creature ... Some, when they had the vision, had it but for a moment ... Few indeed are left that can still remember much." (Phaedrus, 249e-250a)

Like an initiation into a mystery religion, our eternal souls are enlightened by:

"...the spectacles on which we gaze in the moment of final revelation; pure was the light that shone around us, and pure were we." (Phadrus, 250c)

The purpose of philosophy for Plato is to remember that primal vision of pure, powerful Light. The very purpose of life is to remember that journey between lives, that pilgrimage between death and birth, to uncover that transcendent vision of Light revealed in NDE reports.

"To fear death is nothing other than to think oneself wise when one is not. For it is to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not even turn out to be one of the greatest blessings of human beings. And yet people fear it as if they knew for certain it is the greatest evil." – Socrates

math dude wrote:

I didn't say that because the universe has a design, there must by neccessity have been a designer. But, I find no reason within the universe for there to be a design, and I find God to be a reasonable explanation for a design.

When using design in the sense of a basic scheme or pattern that affects and controls function, there most definitely is a design to the universe. Light moves at the same speed, gravity follows laws, atoms have a pattern...

Simply because the universe has a design, there is no need to try to give reason to the design, only to attempt to understand the design itself.

Personally, I believe the idea of God to be a crutch to to try and help people comprehend that which we don't yet understand.

...apples are fun that is 'way 'WAY cool. Fascinating.

Limiting our inqisitiveness to merely finding patterns in natural phenomena is quite all right, if that is one's choice. But criticising someone else for having a natural curiosity, and perhaps speculating in the area of metaphysics, theology, etc., is rediculous, if not completely self-centered. There is also a difference between using God as a crutch to explain unexplained natural phenomena, and using God to explain metaphysics or anything beyond the empirical.

IF we limit our knowledge to patterns in natural phenomena, we can forget ethics, which includes the word "ought". Merely mentioning the word, assumes that one particular state of affairs is superior to another, and this assumes some ideal outside the natural to which the world should conform.

I think that the word "design" is a crutch, used by scientist to fool people into believing that they actually have some truth-content in their enterprize. Every theory (or pettern) has zero probability of being true, so why bother to even look for a pattern?

apples are fun wrote:

Right. Did you see the video? In the case of Pam Reynolds, for example, you have, I think, two choices:

1) Pam experienced consciousness while brain-dead, and while brain dead perceived things she could not have had she not been brain dead, but conscious, with her eyes shut, and with clicking devices in her ears or

2) Pam was lying, and someon3e else was also lying, and they engaged in a rather elaborate fraud.

Re: #1)---Pam's actual account was more detailed than is shown in this film. She recounted a dirty joke told about her while brain dead, word-for-word...

You write "Right"... as if any natural explanation is absurd. But consider the possibility that she was not actually brain dead. See the following:

From the article:

The clinical examination of patients who are presumed to be brain dead must be performed with precision. The declaration of brain death requires not only a series of careful neuorlogical tests but also the establishment of the cause of coma, the ascertainment of irreversibility, the resolution of any misleading clinical neurological signs, the recognition of possible confounding factors, the interpretation of the findings on neuroimaging, and the performance of any confirmatory laboratory tests that are deemed necessary. One may argue that the decision should be made by a neurologist or a neurosurgeon, but the necessary degree of expertise is not readily available in many smaller hospitals."

" Misdiagnosis of brain death is possible if a locked-in syndrome, hypothermia, or drug intoxication is not recognized. The locked in syndrome is usually a consequence of the destruction of the base of the pons. The patient cannot move the limbs, grimace, or swallow, but the upper rostral mesencephalic structures involved in voluntary blinking and vertical eye movements remain intact. Consciousness persists because the tegmentum, with the reticular formation, is not affected".

I never said you should limit your inquizitiveness. What I said is that science is limited to the observeable. I actually would encourage you to look in other areas in your search for truth because the meaning of life will never be found through scientific experimentation.

If the term "crutch" offended you, I apologize. I just couldn't think of a more fitting word for my belief.

Really? I would be very interested in seeing the math that shows this. And please, show your work. I'll have math dude double check it.

Given any finite set of data (which is all any scientist has time for), there are an infinite number of theories which fit the data. You figure the rest out.

In the real world, there is not an infinite number of theories which fit any given set of data.

Realistically, we don't know what the f. is going on. We never have. Maybe we never will. The arrogance of man is that he wishes to pretend that he comprehends the world or the universe, while he hardly knows the rudiments of how his own body or mind works. Nor can he solve simple and obvious problems such as the prevention of world wide killing or malnutrition. (If man could stop these tragedies, why hasn't he already?) This shows how little we understand, how small our power is. Understand the universe? We don't even understand ourselves.

[quote]perspective wrote:

Realistically, we don't know what the f. is going on. We never have. Maybe we never will. quote]

Ever driven a car?

Are you vaccinated against polio?

Ever turned on a computer? (you must have)

you're right, mankind doesn't know sh*t about how nature works.

I'm not sure you saw the video or understand the problem. Pam had no measurable brain activity at all throughout the procedure---her brain activity was consistently monitored, which is what makes her case unusual in the NDE literature. Read the below to understand a bit about what this operation entails.

Moreover, during Operation Standstill, her hearing and vision were not available to her **even if she were neither brain dead nor under anesthesia**.

SUSPENDED ANIMATION -- SURGERY'S FRONTIER:

Man cooled to near-death for 'impossible' brain operation

By Elisabeth Rosenthal

----------------------------------

(Reprinted from the Science page of The New York Times of November 13, 1990.)

The operating room at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center was alive with the sounds and lights of high-technology medical equipment. At the center of the commotion last Wednesday lay a 24-year-old patient, already rendered unconscious by anesthesia and about to lose even the vestige of brain activity as surgeons prepared to stop his blood flow and cool his brain to a limbo just short of death. The operation offered the only chance of repairing a straw-thin blood vessel near the center of his brain that had ballooned to the size of a golf ball and was pressing lethally on vital brain centers.

The novel and risky operation about to begin would push at the frontiers of brain surgery as well as at the limits of the human body's tolerance. Two brain surgeons, a cardiac surgery team, three anesthesiologists and more than two dozen nurses and technicians crowded around the tiny operating table.

The din was overwhelming. A heart monitor emitted rhythmic bleeps, a respirator whooshed, the bone drill droned a high pitched squeal as it carved a three-inch hole in the right side of the patient's skull.

"Let's start cooling," Dr. Robert A. Solomon, the neurosurgeon in charge, said as he finished clearing out a two-inch deep crater over the bulging vessel. The patient, Donald Rogers Jr. of Kansas City, Kansas, was then attached to a cardiac bypass machine which cooled his blood.

As his body temperature fell, the colors on monitors slowly ebbed and the room grew silent. At 86 degrees the rippling brain waves on the EEG monitor calmed and his heart rate slowed to a mere 50 beats a minute. With each degree the temperature dropped, his heart dragged more: at 80 degrees, 40 beats; at 75, 30. At 72 degrees it seemed to shiver, then abruptly stopped, a normal physiologic response to cold. The image on the television screen went limp.

Clicking and whirring, the bypass machine took over circulation. At 60 degrees, Dr. Craig R. Smith, the cardiac surgeon charged with masterminding the body's blood flow, signaled the start of a trip to the netherworld of consciousness. "Everybody ready?" he asked as Dr. Solomon resumed his seat over the hole in the head. "All right. Bypass off. Circulatory arrest. Let's drain."

The blood halted its habitual pumping course through the young man's arteries. It drained to a still pool in a sterile chamber on the floor. The lines on the monitors fell ominously flat. For the next half hour, Donald Rogers was an inanimate object, a patient in limbo, not measurably alive, but not quite dead either.

Suspended animation, a staple of science fiction, is now being used at a few hospitals to allow surgeons to operate on certain badly deformed blood vessels that cannot be repaired while full of blood. These deformities, known as aneurysms, are places where weak spots puff out from the wall of the blood vessels of the brain.

When the puffs are small and accessible, surgeons can fix them while the blood is flowing. But when the aneurysms are large and lie deep within the brain, like Mr. Rogers', the coursing blood makes repair work too dangerous. A neurosurgeon in Kansas City, Mo., had given Mr. Rogers a 10 percent chance of survival using conventional anesthesia.

"With normal blood pressure, operating on a giant aneurysm is like operating on a balloon," Dr. Solomon said. "It's tense and fragile and once you break it, the patient is lost.

"But with no circulation and no blood pressure, the situation is much better. The vessels collapse and become soft and manageable."

The notion that the body can survive without circulation at very low temperatures arose from cases in which children who have lost consciousness in very cold water have been revive after hours of submersion. When the body is cooled, it needs much less energy, and the brain can survive longer without oxygen.

The goal of the aneurysm operation is to cheat death for minutes, allowing surgeons time to complete the delicate operation. At a body temperature of 60 degrees, almost 40 degrees below normal, the brain can survive an hour before damage.

LIMITS OF BODY'S ENDURANCE

"We are pushing the limits of the human body's tolerance," said Dr. Eric Raps, a neurologist who is studying the effects of the procedure on patients. "I've seen this a number of times and it's always amazing stuff."

It is at best a risky move, reserved only "for the direst of cases," said Dr. Young. Less than half a dozen hospitals use the technique, known as hypothermic arrest, for brain surgery.

In February 1989, Donald Rogers began to have blinding headaches that forced him to miss many days of work at a grocery store. A brain scan revealed the giant aneurysm, which doctors told him was inoperable.

Last Sept. 28, his speech suddenly became garbled and he developed trouble walking. Another CAT scan showed that the aneurysm was compressing his brain stem. Soon, he could no longer write, shower or shave.

"It was to the point where he didn’t have any choice but to try surgery," said his mother, Kay Rogers, as the patient lay recovering in intensive care this weekend. "He was choking on his food because his palate didn't work. He knew he was dying, that soon he would have trouble breathing."

"He didn't want to be on a respirator," his father, Donald Rogers Sr., said. "He told us he didn’t want to live like that."

Of the many neurosurgeons in the United States and Canada who were reached, only Dr. Solomon would take the case. "Without being able to stop the circulation, I wouldn't even have tried," Dr. Solomon said. "But it's hard to say no when you see a 24 year old dying in front of your eyes, and I have been delighted with our results so far."

Mr. Rogers is the 10th patient to have the surgery at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. Of the first nine, all are alive and leading independent lives, except for one who is in rehabilitation after suffering a stroke during surgery. Because of the novelty of the technique, the hospital agreed to let a reporter attend the operation.

Doctors first tried the hypothermic technique in the early 1960's, but the results were usually disastrous, Dr. Raps said. But because of improved intensive monitoring capabilities and bypass equipment developed in the last decade, the technique has recently been revived with success.

It is at the pinnacle of high technology medicine costing around $100,000 to pay for the two dozen people and the machinery that comes with them. Since Mr. Rogers is uninsured, the hospital and doctors are donating their services.

Because of the location of Mr. Rogers's aneurysm and the severe symptoms it was causing, Dr. Solomon had expected a particularly difficult case. In fact, the nearly 20 cold minutes with no circulation were filled with quiet and agonizing drama.

Under a single light in the center of a darkened operating room Dr. Solomon and his assistant, Dr. Dale Swift, peered through a microscope at the now flaccid pale yellow aneurysm, manipulating tiny knives and scissors around an obstacle course of tiny but vital vessels and nerves: the third nerve which controls eye movement, the superior cerebellar artery, which feeds the balance center of the brain. Every five minutes, Dr. Raps called out the time..

But as they proved its boundaries, the aneurysm proved to be even more formidable than expected: Instead of a puffing out from the side of an artery, which could be neatly clipped off at its base, the entire blood vessel had ballooned.

"This is unbelievable," said Dr. Solomon. "It's pretty grim. I don't know what I'm going to do." To repair the aneurysm, he would have to cut off blood flow to the entire vessel and to whatever part of the delicate brain stem the artery supplied. He had only a few minutes to decide before the clock ran out on the patient's endurance. Knowing that many parts of the brain receive blood from more than one source, Dr. Solomon took the gamble. After several minutes of probing and maneuvering, he placed a tiny clamp around the artery just before where it began to balloon and cinched the clamp shut.

"O.K., start some flow please," Dr. Solomon said. And as the bypass machine began to whir, sending blood back through Mr. Rogers' body, a small vessel on the screen bloomed from still white to pulsating red. It was a good sign, Dr. Solomon explained: the brain stem seemed to be getting blood from elsewhere.

The warming that followed was as welcome as springtime, with various monitors jumping to life as the patient's body temperature climbed. At 70 degrees, the heart began to twitch and, after a few electrical shocks to reset its rhythm, it began quickly to beat. But since the aneurysm had been so complicated, the odds of Mr. Rogers' surviving were still only 50 percent, Dr. Solomon said, as he left the operating room looking glum.

Two days later, Mr. Rogers woke up and moved his limbs. Although the right side of his face was swollen from the five-inch line of surgical staples that followed his hairline, he told his parents that he "felt better."

"I'm encouraged and expecting very good things," said Dr. Solomon, who added that the patient would have to spend months in rehabilitation to recover the abilities he lost during the month before surgery. "We've cured the aneurysm. He has a long road back but he certainly has an opportunity to lead a normal life."

Yesterday Mr. Rogers was preparing to leave intensive care. He is breathing and moving on his own, a triumph in itself so soon after surgery. He still has trouble forming words and his grip and gait are still unsteady.

In another week or two he should return to the Midwest to begin the hard work of recovery.

Beyond Brain Death by Pam Reynolds

Author: Pam Reynolds

Date: 10/17/2001

Michael Sabom is a cardiologist whose latest book, Light and Death, includes a detailed medical and scientific analysis of an amazing near-death experience of a patient named Pam Reynolds who underwent a highly unusual operation in which the patient is "flatlined" in order to perform a particular operation - in this case, brain surgery. A portion of this case is summarized below.

Thirty-five year old Pam Reynolds was being operated on for a giant basilar artery aneurysm. A weakness in the wall of the large artery at the base of her brain had caused it to balloon out much like a bubble on the side of a defective automobile tire. Rupture of the aneurysm would be immediately fatal.

The size and location of the aneurysm, however, precluded its safe removal using the standard neurosurgical techniques. She had been referred to a doctor who had pioneered a daring surgical procedure known as hypothermic cardiac arrest, which would allow Pam's aneurysm to be excised with a reasonable chance of success. This operation, nicknamed "standstill" by the doctors who perform it, would require that her body temperature be lowered to 60 degrees, her heartbeat and breathing stopped, her brain waves flattened, and the blood drained from her head. In everyday terms she would be dead. But in the hands of skilled physicians she was not. Or was she?

As the operation was being performed, Pam's near-death experience began to unfold. She relates the story with remarkable detail and her observations of the surgery were later verified to be true:

"The next thing I recall was the sound: It was a natural "D". As I listened to the sound, I felt it was pulling me out of the top of my head. The further out of my body I got, the more clear the tone became. I had the impression it was like a road, a frequency that you go on ... I remember seeing several things in the operating room when I was looking down. It was the most aware that I think that I have ever been in my entire life ... I was metaphorically sitting on [the doctor's] shoulder. It was not like normal vision. It was brighter and more focused and clearer than normal vision ... There was so much in the operating room that I didn't recognize, and so many people.

"I thought the way they had my head shaved was very peculiar. I expected them to take all of the hair, but they did not ...

"The saw thing that I hated the sound of looked like an electric toothbrush and it had a dent in it, a groove at the top where the saw appeared to go into the handle, but it didn't ... And the saw had interchangeable blades, too, but these blades were in what looked like a socket wrench case ... I heard the saw crank up. I didn't see them use it on my head, but I think I heard it being used on something. It was humming at a relatively high pitch and then all of a sudden it went Brrrrrrrrr! like that.

"Someone said something about my veins and arteries being very small. I believe it was a female voice and that it was Dr. Murray, but I'm not sure. She was the cardiologist [sic]. I remember thinking that I should have told her about that ... I remember the heart-lung machine. I didn't like the respirator ... I remember a lot of tools and instruments that I did not readily recognize.

"There was a sensation like being pulled, but not against your will. I was going on my own accord because I wanted to go. I have different metaphors to try to explain this. It was like the Wizard of Oz - being taken up in a tornado vortex, only you're not spinning around like you've got vertigo. You're very focused and you have a place to go. The feeling was like going up in an elevator real fast. And there was a sensation, but it wasn't a bodily, physical sensation. It was like a tunnel but it wasn't a tunnel.

"At some point very early in the tunnel vortex I became aware of my grandmother calling me. But I didn't hear her call me with my ears ... It was a clearer hearing than with my ears. I trust that sense more than I trust my own ears.

"The feeling was that she wanted me to come to her, so I continued with no fear down the shaft. It's a dark shaft that I went through, and at the very end there was this very little tiny pinpoint of light that kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

"The light was incredibly bright, like sitting in the middle of a lightbulb. It was so bright that I put my hands in front of my face fully expecting to see them and I could not. But I knew they were there. Not from a sense of touch. Again, it's terribly hard to explain, but I knew they were there ...

"I noticed that as I began to discern different figures in the light - and they were all covered with light, they were light, and had light permeating all around them - they began to form shapes I could recognize and understand. I could see that one of them was my grandmother. I don't know if it was reality or projection, but I would know my grandmother, the sound of her, anytime, anywhere.

"Everyone I saw, looking back on it, fit perfectly into my understanding of what that person looked like at their best during their lives.

"I recognized a lot of people. My uncle Gene was there. So was my great-great-Aunt Maggie, who was really a cousin. On Papa's side of the family, my grandfather was there ... They were specifically taking care of me, looking after me.

"They would not permit me to go further ... It was communicated to me - that's the best way I know how to say it, because they didn't speak like I'm speaking - that if I went all the way into the light something would happen to me physically. They would be unable to put this me back into the body me, like I had gone too far and they couldn't reconnect. So they wouldn't let me go anywhere or do anything.

"I wanted to go into the light, but I also wanted to come back. I had children to be reared. It was like watching a movie on fast-forward on your VCR: You get the general idea, but the individual freeze-frames are not slow enough to get detail.

"Then they [deceased relatives] were feeding me. They were not doing this through my mouth, like with food, but they were nourishing me with something. The only way I know how to put it is something sparkly. Sparkles is the image that I get. I definitely recall the sensation of being nurtured and being fed and being made strong. I know it sounds funny, because obviously it wasn't a physical thing, but inside the experience I felt physically strong, ready for whatever.

"My grandmother didn't take me back through the tunnel, or even send me back or ask me to go. She just looked up at me. I expected to go with her, but it was communicated to me that she just didn't think she would do that. My uncle said he would do it. He's the one who took me back through the end of the tunnel. Everything was fine. I did want to go.

"But then I got to the end of it and saw the thing, my body. I didn't want to get into it ... It looked terrible, like a train wreck. It looked like what it was: dead. I believe it was covered. It scared me and I didn't want to look at it.

"It was communicated to me that it was like jumping into a swimming pool. No problem, just jump right into the swimming pool. I didn't want to, but I guess I was late or something because he [the uncle] pushed me. I felt a definite repelling and at the same time a pulling from the body. The body was pulling and the tunnel was pushing ... It was like diving into a pool of ice water ... It hurt!

"When I came back, they were playing "Hotel California" and the line was "You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave." I mentioned [later] to Dr. Brown that that was incredibly insensitive and he told me that I needed to sleep more. [laughter] When I regained consciousness, I was still on the respirator."

For practical purposes outside the world of academic debate, three clinical tests commonly determine brain death. First, a standard electroencephalogram, or EEG, measures brain-wave activity. A "flat" EEG denotes nonfunction of the cerebral cortex - the outer shell of the cerebrum. Second, auditory evoked potentials, similar to those [clicks] elicited by the ear speakers in Pam's surgery, measure brain-stem viability. Absence of these potentials indicates nonfunction of the brain stem. And third, documentation of no blood flow to the brain is a marker for a generalized absence of brain function.

But during "standstill", Pam's brain was found "dead" by all three clinical tests - her electroencephalogram was silent, her brain-stem response was absent, and no blood flowed through her brain. Interestingly, while in this state, she encountered the "deepest" near-death experience of all Atlanta Study participants.

The soul certainly doesn't exist as a material or even spiritual entity, but the concept usefully describes a palpable human quality. When we say someone has "a soul" or just "soul," we mean that he or she has a deep, full, rich humanness.

In my own words, people with soul have equally large amounts of personal dignity AND sympathy and understanding for the needs of other people. Possession of soul equates to being freer from selfishness, vanity, and contrivance in comparison to others. People with soul have a lot to give, and are willing to share. We recognize this quality easily and gravitate toward it, because it reminds us of what our own fullest, best selves might be.

It is natural to hope that such an endearing and seemingly essential quality endures beyond our short stay on earth, but unfortunately I don't see how that could be the case.

SC Slim wrote:

Personally, I believe the idea of God to be a crutch to to try and help people comprehend that which we don't yet understand.

This statement is of fundamental importance. It seems that those who are atheists or heavily value science are inherently interested in explaining how the world works. This is a perfectly defensible and fine way to go about life; is seems natural and healthy to be curious about the workings of nature.

Most people of faith that I know are not interested in God as a way to explain how things in nature work. Rather, God (in whatever form) is the fundamental component in spiritual life.

Now, I realize that for certain fundamentalist Christian groups, it is of utmost importance to prove the scientific accuracy of the bible (most everyone, especially atheists, have heard of some instance where these people try to prove that humans and dinosaurs co-existed only thousands of years ago, for example), and these people seem to get the most "press" because they are contraversial. However, I suspect these certain fundamentalists are probably in the minority.

Sensible people have articulated how religion and science can co-exist but no one seems to be much interested in that.

black people have souls that white people can't comprehend.

Throughout history, natural explanations have been found to describe bizarre events. Before "jumping off the bridge" into the supernatural we should carefully consider the possibilities. Are we overlooking something? Might we have discovered something new? You have presented testimonials of NDE/OBE as "proof" of a mind/brain disconnection. But to avoid drawing conclusions based on wishful thinking, we need to consider some facts:

Fact: Medical tests are not error free. You accept the claim as a certainty. From the earlier article in New England Journal of Medicine: " Misdiagnosis of brain death is possible if a locked-in syndrome, hypothermia, or drug intoxication is not recognized".

Fact: Hypothermia was used in the case you cited.

Fact: In the case you cited, the doctors used "Novel and risky" techniques which "... push at the frontiers of brain surgury" (words from your article). I guess I must point out to you that in cases like this, no one can claim to have "certainty" of the outcomes.

Fact: Surgery on the brain involves physical invasion of the brain and therefore is likely to provide very strong stimulation (quite possibly enough to wake an unconscious person). Preventing such waking is one of the main goals of anesthesia.

Fact: Science has not answered all questions with respect to consciousness or states thereof. Given the newness of hypothermic surgery, it is most likely that there are things we need to learn about consciousaness in this state.

Fact: NDE's can be created with drugs.

http://skepdic.com/nde.html

A natural explanation for your account is that the patient had periods of consciousness during the operation. For people caught up emotionally in the experience, it can often be easier to stop looking toward natural explanations. Rationally though, the bolder the claim, the better the evidence must be (in quality *and* quantity) before we throw out any possible natural explanation. The reason for this is, to accept weak evidence one risks never learning the details of what is really happening.

"I'm not saying you are required to believe anything. I'm merely stating that science deals with the observable, an area of which "other realities" does not qualify."

I completely agree that science is legitimate observation. However In science there is an implicit (and essential) claim that whatever science(observation) tells us has some correlation with reality.

And That, is what I find to be a highly likely but utterly unprovable assumption. Science(observation) is just one tool with it's own set of assumptions and oversights. It is, however a very compelling tool. One that I decide to believe and benefit from every day.

"such knowledge converges toward agreement with the real world."

I was completely with you until this sentence, Maybe you are right, but I have no doubt that this is an unsubstantiable claim. To know this would require knowledge of science AND ultimate reality, which you admit(wisely)are divergent. If you had the proper knowledge to make this claim(which I think is impossible unless you are omnipotent), then science would be entirely suprefluous becuase you would already know the answers and not need the system of questioning and observation.

"Religious faith is arbitrary and is often in contradiction with our knowledge of real world. It is often inconsisiten both with science and other religions. Perhaps one thing consistent with religious faith is the frequency with which it's adherents claim to have special knowledge of the world (or some other imaginary world). But because this knowledge is "special", it can't be verified whatsoever"

You don't have to verify it, that's why it's called faith!

"Assuming one has faith, how can it explain any of the issues listed in the opening post."

I'm starting to think that you underestimate the amount of 'faith' required for one to have faith. Seriously, it does not require an explanation.