XPost: alt.atheism, alt.astronomy, sci.math
From: jesse@phiwumbda.org
JohnF writes:
> In sci.math Jesse F. Hughes wrote:
>>
>> And, if I recall the article I read yesterday correctly, no numbers are
>> involved. Rather pictures are placed high on a shelf, a few inches
>> beneath the ceiling and facing up. This is starting to sound like a
>> much more interesting experiment, at least for those who are puzzled by
>> the phenomenon and believe it's plausible that it represents a real
>> out-of-body experience[1].
>
> Didn't read the whole thread, but did anybody point out that
> out-of-body doesn't necessarily imply afterlife? If true, all
> out-of-body proves is that living people can somehow experience
> far-away events. Weird, yes. But it doesn't prove dead carcasses
> can experience anything ("Night of the Living Dead" notwithstanding).
> That would be even weirder.
I am so glad that you excepted "Night of the Living Dead", because what
George Romero says is true, dammit.
But, to be fair to the afterlife folk, it isn't literally dead carcasses
that experience something, but rather some nebulous mind or soul,
distinct from the physical self. Ignoring the various philosophical
puzzles of mind/body dualism, one can see that the existence of a
non-physical soul distinct from a mind may be a non-scientific claim ---
with nothing counting as evidence for or against it. Unless, that is,
there is some sort of physical confirmation that could be had, like the
experiment here provided (which requires that sometimes, your soul
leaves your body at death or at least a death-like state and returns
when the body revives).
But, yeah, it's not clear that even if we could show these NDEs are real
OBEs[1], it would mean that the person lives on after real, permanent,
physical death. Still, it would be an interesting if wildly implausible
result.
> I'd have to guess that, if true, out-of-body means that your
> living brain is somehow responsible for generating your out-of-body
> persona. Kill off your in-body brain and it's bye-bye to that
> out-of-body you, too.
But your guess is not what most believers in the afterlife would think.
At least, as far as I reckon, they are dualists, believing that the mind
is not merely identical with (or some sort of feature of) the brain.
> Anyway, I'd go along with those 0% successes, and guess that
> it's all a bunch of malarkey. Why does anybody follow up on
> this kind of foolishness? If you've got nothing better to do,
> then just trying to think of something better to do would still
> be better than this. Right?
The people carrying out the experiment had some earlier results that
they interpreted as suggestive that NDEs are real, not hallucinatory,
events, if I understand correctly. You can imagine that such a belief
would be good motivation to investigate further. Seems to me that their
experiment (depending on its details) appropriately tests for a
negative result and so this is a pretty good reaction -- far better than
we usually see for similar claims.
Anyway, my guess is that the actual results have not yet been reported,
but I'd also wager 0% success rate. My criticism with HVAC wasn't over
his belief that NDEs were malarkey, but with the fact that he pulled a
half-remembered experiment out and pretended that he knew the outcome
and had citations. If such an experiment had been conducted, I wanted
to know more.
Footnotes:
[1] These abbreviations are fun!
--
Jesse F. Hughes
"My baby don't allow me in the kitchen
and I've come to love her decision."
-- Bad Livers
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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