Researchers of the Immortality project say they have a Naturalistic Explanation for NDEs

At least they think they do. As they mentioned a typical materialist explanation that their maybe some undetectable brain activity in the brain that can account for these experiences without saying that consciousness can function without the brain. The problem is this is very improbable. As EEG expert Dr. John Greenfield has confirmed.

He says,

“It’s very unlikely that a hypoperfused brain [someone with no blood flow to the brain], with no evidence of electrical activity could generate NDEs. Human studies as well as animal studies have typically shown very little brain perfusion [blood flow] or glucose utilization when the EEG is flat. There are deep brain areas involved in generating memories that might still operate at some very reduced level during cardiac arrest, but of course any subcortically generated activity can’t be brought to consciousness without at least one functioning cerebral hemisphere. So even if there were some way that NDEs were generated during the hypoxic state [while the brain is shut off from oxygen], you would not experience them until reperfusion [blood flow] allowed you to dream them or wake up and talk about them”, Greenfield stated.


The philosophers of this book that is coming out about a naturalistic explanation for NDE's go on to say.

Physical explanations of NDEs are not only significantly more likely to be true than supernatural explanations, but that they are also capable of being deeply attractive and inspiring, Mitchell-Yellin says.

First of all I don't think the afterlife explanation is an supernatural explanation. It's an natural phenomenon in the sense that we can explore it.

More typical argument's against the idea of an afterlife

1. What benefits has an paranormal/supernatural belief had on humanity as a whole?

Well let's see extensive research has been done on mental mediumship and the data from there shows clearly that people are helped greatly in grief when they are touch with loved ones from the otherside. Also, there is a lot of strong evidence for the existence of an afterlife a lot follows from this evidence. So this clearly also benefits humanity as a whole as well.

2. "You know they say if it's too good to be true it probably is".

This argument looks like a powerful argument however it is not. If their is very strong evidence for the existence of an afterlife this argument loses it's merit. Which there is.


3. Why is there no ghost's of dinosaurs along with other animals that have lived long before humans?

As far as I gather, their is a human connection to certain things. For example humans, are connected to domestic pets such as cats, dogs etc. There is a great love loss between a human and a dinosaur. As dinosaurs see humans of course as food along with all other smaller animals. Knowing so they do this on the physical plane must likely it would be the same on the spiritual plane.


4. Why do ghosts always wear clothes?. If they really were real ghosts instead of some hallucination than we would expect them to be naked instead

Actually no we would not they want to be presentable and in a noticeable way. They only wear clothes they most matches their identity. '

5. "The problem with paranormal experiences is nothing follows from it neither scientific or whatever else".

I disagree strongly a lot follows from paranormal experiences. Not all experiences are real encounters with the otherside. Many of them can be explain by physical explanations. However their are a lot that have withstood the test of time and they are not going to go away.

Why Consciousness probably is not an illusion!

I have been hearing this often that consciousness is probably an illusion produced by the brain. The problem with this view is that your not only supposing that subjective consciousness, internal feeling you are someone but your mind is attached heavily to your consciousness. That mind features things such as memories, personality and so on. So you would also have to say those are also illusions generated by brain processes. Going down this dangerous road you are ignoring all of the evidence from psychology of mental states and their reality. As well as all evidence that is the mind. You might then start pondering that the brain too is an illusion. This view brings up a lot more questions than it can answer. That is why I do not endorse this view.

Journey - Open Arms

Phineas Gage revisited

I just came across some new information on Phineas Gage. It looks like according to neuroscientist, Dean Burnett most of the extreme claims of Phineas Gage personality changes were made after his death. So their was no way for Phineas Gage to refute them. There is no doubt of course that his personality was affected. It the degree of which it was that is in question. So your saying so what?. There are thousands of other cases of personality change. Well the cases are also probably not as dramatic as many neuroscientist's let on they are, especially knowing the fact that these other cases are similar to the Phineas Gage case. Neuroscientist Dean Burnett is no dualist neither is he a materialist as far as I know. His book however was reviewed by csicop which is a skeptical organization and they gave his book praise. Even if he is a materialist that doesn't mean he cannot be honest. He is brave enough to admit that's what materialist's often claim that personality couldn't survive death because of dramatic personality change, well when a neuroscientist comes out and admits that their is indeed personality change but not the degree that materialist's pertain it to be. Many of these materialist's are neuroscientist's themselves but when he admits that other neuroscientist's can overstate cases, it's important to get this out there. I should also point out, there are also neuroscientist's, who are dualist's as well along with belonging to other views too. It should be noted however that a dramatic effect on his personality did happen but not to the extreme level that many materialist's who were trying to fit the data in with the view that personality itself is caused by the frontal lobe. The point is yes there is a strong correlation with the frontal lobe of the brain and personality and other brain structures have strong correlations with other mental functions. But that doesn't not equal the type of casuality that materialist's pertain that mind is what the brain does. This case is considered to be a dramatic example of mind-brain dependency. However, as I have clearly shown here it is not.


https://books.google.ca/books?id=-Nr_CwAAQBAJ&pg=PT134&lpg=PT134&dq=The+Idiot+Brain:+A+Neuroscientist+Explains+What+Your+Head+Is+Really+Up+To+phineas+gage&source=bl&ots=BQ_B3s8F-L&sig=Ru5uz2g56qCoAGiqFUjPSINAqlw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjzw73anZbNAhVIw4MKHfwVBdYQ6AEILzAD#v=onepage&q=The%20Idiot%20Brain%3A%20A%20Neuroscientist%20Explains%20What%20Your%20Head%20Is%20Really%20Up%20To%20phineas%20gage&f=false


The Strange case of Phineas Gage

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/27225153_The_Strange_Case_of_Phineas_Gage

Stephen Braude says that memories are not produced by the brain

Stephen Braude is a parapsychologist, who skeptical of the view that traces in the brain is wrong. Because they are not stored there in the first place. I would agree with Stephen Braude, memory is information that is filtered and received by the brain not stored/produced by the brain.

You can listen to the skeptiko podcast here with Stephen Braude

http://www.skeptiko.com/stephen-braude-memories-not-in-brain-318/

Why Free Will is Not an illusion created by the brain!

There is a lot of experiments that materialist's use to support their view that free will is illusory. These experiments however are often misinterpreted to support that view. There are three big reasons why the experiments don't provide that free will is illusory. This is taken from brain blogger all credit goes to W.R. Klemm, DVM, PhD. (I realize he isn't a dualist but he makes good points when it comes to free will not being illusory based on experiments purported to show it. So here we go.

1. The timing of a free will event requires introspection as well as other research hows that introspection estimates of event timing are not accurate.
2) Simple finger movements may be performed without much conscious thought and certainly not representative of the conscious decisions and choices required in high-speed conversation or situations where the subconscious mind cannot know ahead of time what to do.
3) The brain activity measures have been primitive and incomplete.

There are some more obvious issues as well that many scientist's have glossed over when examining the data.

Decisions are not often instantaneous (certainly not on a scale of a fraction of a second).
Conscious realization that a decision has been made is delayed from the actual decision, and these may be two distinct processes.
Decision making is not the only mental process going on in such tasks.
Some willed action, as when first learning to play a musical instrument or touch type must be freely willed because the subconscious mind cannot know ahead of time what to do.
Free-will experiments have relied too much on awareness of actions and time estimation of accuracy.
Extrapolating from such simple experiments to all mental life is not justified.
Conflicting data and interpretations have been ignored.

We should not underestimate the true power of the subconscious mind, and it is the subconscious mind that shares duties with the conscious mind. This have been known for decades from research done in psychical research and parapsychology.

Why Gilbert Ryle is wrong about Substance Dualism

Gilbert Ryle in his book about the soul he said that Substance Dualism makes the mind body interaction superstitious. On top of that that their is a ghost in the machine. I don't know where he came up with such a strawman. No dualist would say that their is a little man in the brain pulling the strings. Most dualist's would see the soul as immaterial, taking the form of what the body looks like. An appeal that scientist's would dive into pure superstition is outright false. Also, I should add psychology often looks that internal states as very important along with sociology. The last post I made mentioned some powerful arguments for dualism. The very strong correlation between the mind and brain does not point towards a clear arrow of causation. What it does show however that the mind very strongly correlates with the brain. This bothers materialist's as they want to go a step farther and called for causation. This is what is called stretching the data so it appears to fit that view. Of course, I should add they don't like being called materialist's. Even thought that is clearly what their position is, that all their is to reality is physical, no non physical stuff at all.

Here is a powerful refutation of Gilbert Ryle's attack on Dualism


https://www.amazon.com/gp/review/R30LV9YTM6DI8L?ref_=glimp_1rv_cl