Dr. Jeffrey Long’s, God and the Afterlife, Science & Spirituality Have Collided |327|

When are you going to drop this straw god?
Why kill him when he makes such a reliable target? I swear some of these people would analyse Flaubert's Madam Bovery with a forensic on the printing ink. Is it a genuine inability to see past their preconceptions, or just a battle of semantic attrition in a philosophical war?
 
I get the impression that many in psychiatry would draw the same conclusion: that the whole thing was imagined and that they believe they are being respectful when they respond to the question "you don't believe me, do you?" with "I believe that you believe it happened". I imagine a patronising smile to go with it.

Yeah, that's what all doctors are, patronising jerks. No compassionate type among them, except for those who study NDE and come to survivalist conclusion, is that it?

So we should ask what it is about the experience that makes these experts believe they are hearing just another psychotic episode. Reading Small Dog's posts alongside most other sceptical theories, I can't help but conclude that there is an assumption that any kind of spiritual experience must be false because we already know that the spiritual is a product of human imagination. Trying to argue against that is a dead end because they don't recognise that assumption as a metaphysical position but rather an empirical one. They have the weight of physical and medical science behind their diagnosis.

It's simply not possible to have an argument here, let alone win is, is it? All I did was to demonstrate the fallacy of Long's research, showing that asking more questions about the same experience does not necessarily lead to better and more conclusive results. Believe it or not, there are lots of doctors and scientists who ask questions in regards to spirituality.

Coming back to the beings of light and the idea of meeting God, I just have to say that I don't think of God as a separate entity with which we can personally interact. What I call God (and I tend to avoid doing so if I can) is everything that exists, including myself. So in a sense, the being of light could be said to be God but it isn't some higher god come down to meet us: we are already, and always have been, God.

That's what I think of God. Along the lines of Hinduism and Buddhism. Everything is the manifestation of God, from every one of us (including Hitler) to the dirtiest toilet on the Planet. The only thing is that we lost the ability to see it, mostly due to our gift of thinking abstract thoughts that allow us to create false values and fantasise about how things should work. In this respect I think animals are much closer to God than humans: not thinking about it, just experiencing. Idealistic sort of thought, but I think you get my point.

So yes, God is love because love would not exist without God (nor would anything else). At the same time, I don't think that love is merely a product of the human brain; I think it is a kind of universal impetus for evolution: it is both the impulse for and the purpose of creation. If so, one could ask: why evil? That is what appears to me to be one of the failings of humanity but those failings require free will and that is why I believe we do have free will.

Why then is God love and not the rest of it - hate, envy, anger etc.? I think that the primal sin is classifying things as good and evil, and it is the source of all suffering. If we admit that God is everything we have to agree that the worst crimes of humanity are also the work of God. That's why I personally think that all emotions are human, and God is way above that.

There was a podcast here not so long ago, about a Harvard scientist studying people considered spiritually advanced. It stuck in my head that one of the findings was that when those people progress spiritually they found, often to some degree of discomfort, that along with negative emotions their attachment for their close ones diminished as well. More spiritual, closer to God, less impassioned.
 
I'm happy to see people pursue all kinds of research as well. :)

I wish Smithy would go on Skeptiko and talk to Alex about his book.

:)! Hmmm - perhaps one day?...
But honestly, I am not so fond of the idea of being interviewed live by anyone. I prefer an e-mailed interview.

BTW - I wish to emphasize that The Self Does Not Die is NOT solely MY book. The main author is Titus Rivas. He did most of the work and was assisted by (now the late) Anny Dirven. My part is mainly chapter 11: How Skeptics Attempt to Explain Away Near-Death Experiences .... and Fail. That chapter is almost a booklet in its own right (80 densely typeset pages). In that chapter I present a thorough refutation of the opinions of Dr Gerald Woerlee regarding the dentures man case and the famous case of Pam Reynolds. It also contains an "intermezzo" by Robert and Suzanne Mays wherein they make minced meat of Luke Dittrich's outrageous Esquire article about Eben Alexander.

Regarding the topic at hand (in this thread), we (Rivas, Dirven and I) did not focus at all on the nature of the being of light in NDE's. We have solely focussed on veridical perceptions experienced by NDE'rs and which perceptions were verified by independent third parties. Why? Simply because they have the greatest evidential power.
 
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Yeah, that's what all doctors are, patronising jerks. No compassionate type among them, except for those who study NDE and come to survivalist conclusion, is that it?

Did I say all doctors? But, speaking from my experience with psychiatrists (and I've had a few), they have been patronising. Rarely looking me in the eye, the smile and nod when they clearly think that I am spouting nonsense just before prescribing yet another debilitating drug that makes me feel worse than ever. Thankfully, for the past several years I've learned other ways of managing my depressions and anxieties without recourse to drugs.

It's simply not possible to have an argument here, let alone win is, is it?

Is that what you are here for? The argument? The win?

Why then is God love and not the rest of it - hate, envy, anger etc.? I think that the primal sin is classifying things as good and evil, and it is the source of all suffering.

I don't necessarily disagree with that. But there's a difference between ascribing all responsibility for evil and suffering to God and in taking responsibility for our own actions born out of our own free will. I think that love is more than an emotion, it is primary (as in the stuff of God) and that what we call evil, good and bad, hatred, etc., are our own misdirections of love itself. So yes, that fallibility is the source of all suffering.
 
If I'm understanding your comment correctly, you are doing what so many atheists often do: reduce the concept of God to the Old Testament Jehova figure. Do we have to put a disclaimer under all of our posts to make it clear that we are not fundamentalists? When are you going to drop this straw god?
You've coined a useful neologism Kamarling, not Straw Dogs but Straw Gods!
 
Compare for example the recent book by by Titus Rivas, Anny Dirven and Rudolf H. Smit, which takes a completely different angle of approach. The latter perhaps treads on ground which many are more comfortable in being able to discuss.

Yes, we do not at all focus on the being of light or "God". See what I said about our book in post #83 above.
 
Yeah, that's what all doctors are, patronising jerks. No compassionate type among them, except for those who study NDE and come to survivalist conclusion, is that it?
Can't you manage to a bit less prickly - you know perfectly well that that is not a paraphrase of what Kamarling wrote! I really hoped that as a doctor you would make a useful contribution here. I mean, there must be something about this site that pulls you - I would never spend time on a Christian site - or indeed a Flat Earth site, and neither would you I imagine.

What I guess I am asking is what is your take on the issue of NDE's?
It's simply not possible to have an argument here, let alone win is, is it? All I did was to demonstrate the fallacy of Long's research, showing that asking more questions about the same experience does not necessarily lead to better and more conclusive results. Believe it or not, there are lots of doctors and scientists who ask questions in regards to spirituality.
Well I think most of us feel you are missing the point. Dr. Long's research provides us with a statistical breakdown of what people report in their NDE's. The rest is interpretation, but the raw statistics are valuable I think. We can all decide how to interpret the results - and I for one haven't rushed out to buy a Bible - but the raw data stands for itself - at least in a Western context. I too would like to see the cultural variation of NDE's given more prominence. If you know someone who has done research on a reasonable large group of NDE's (18 doesn't seem to cut it!) why not present it?
That's what I think of God. Along the lines of Hinduism and Buddhism. Everything is the manifestation of God, from every one of us (including Hitler) to the dirtiest toilet on the Planet. The only thing is that we lost the ability to see it, mostly due to our gift of thinking abstract thoughts that allow us to create false values and fantasise about how things should work. In this respect I think animals are much closer to God than humans: not thinking about it, just experiencing. Idealistic sort of thought, but I think you get my point.
Leaving God out of this, I think my personal tentative opinion - backed up by reports from NDE's - is that there is some sort of non-physical plane of existence which outshines what we have here on earth. Perhaps the physical plane is some sort of trial, or a bit like doing something in a simulator - and when you come out of it, the whole thing drops away - rather like finishing a computer game. You can imagine the conversation afterwards, "Harry you son of a bitch, you killed most of my family and then burned me in a pit! I'll try and get even with you next time we play, but come on, we need a beer!"

Of course this is something we have debated many times.
Why then is God love and not the rest of it - hate, envy, anger etc.? I think that the primal sin is classifying things as good and evil, and it is the source of all suffering. If we admit that God is everything we have to agree that the worst crimes of humanity are also the work of God. That's why I personally think that all emotions are human, and God is way above that.
Maybe for the reason I explained above.

SD - you manage to do something that is pretty hard - you get me defending religious ideas - or at least getting perilously close! Can't you understand, you are enumerating the reasons why most of us don't classify ourselves as religious!

The point for me is that consciousness itself seems very hard to explain physically, and NDE's, OBE's, Death Bed visions, ESP, precognition, etc seem to me to be the data that doesn't fit - rather like blurry fringes from a 2-slit experiment were the data that didn't fit around 1900.

David
 
If I'm understanding your comment correctly, you are doing what so many atheists often do: reduce the concept of God to the Old Testament Jehova figure. Do we have to put a disclaimer under all of our posts to make it clear that we are not fundamentalists? When are you going to drop this straw god?
This has nothing to do with fundamentalism or atheism. I was pointing out God did at one time directly intervene in human affairs. Discarding distasteful Biblical history in favor of your own does not erase the former; to do so is nearly tantamount to discarding the Bible wholly, without the Old Testament there would and could not be a New Testament. You miss understood me.
 
Can't you manage to a bit less prickly - you know perfectly well that that is not a paraphrase of what Kamarling wrote! I really hoped that as a doctor you would make a useful contribution here. I mean, there must be something about this site that pulls you - I would never spend time on a Christian site - or indeed a Flat Earth site, and neither would you I imagine.

What I guess I am asking is what is your take on the issue of NDE's?

Well I think most of us feel you are missing the point. Dr. Long's research provides us with a statistical breakdown of what people report in their NDE's. The rest is interpretation, but the raw statistics are valuable I think. We can all decide how to interpret the results - and I for one haven't rushed out to buy a Bible - but the raw data stands for itself - at least in a Western context. I too would like to see the cultural variation of NDE's given more prominence. If you know someone who has done research on a reasonable large group of NDE's (18 doesn't seem to cut it!) why not present it?

Leaving God out of this, I think my personal tentative opinion - backed up by reports from NDE's - is that there is some sort of non-physical plane of existence which outshines what we have here on earth. Perhaps the physical plane is some sort of trial, or a bit like doing something in a simulator - and when you come out of it, the whole thing drops away - rather like finishing a computer game. You can imagine the conversation afterwards, "Harry you son of a bitch, you killed most of my family and then burned me in a pit! I'll try and get even with you next time we play, but come on, we need a beer!"

Of course this is something we have debated many times.

Maybe for the reason I explained above.

SD - you manage to do something that is pretty hard - you get me defending religious ideas - or at least getting perilously close! Can't you understand, you are enumerating the reasons why most of us don't classify ourselves as religious!

The point for me is that consciousness itself seems very hard to explain physically, and NDE's, OBE's, Death Bed visions, ESP, precognition, etc seem to me to be the data that doesn't fit - rather like blurry fringes from a 2-slit experiment were the data that didn't fit around 1900.

David
None of those things you've listed speaks directly about the physical causes of consciousness. The nde's say what might happen to it after death. Obes describe what it may be able to do before death. The same for the rest listed.
 
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This has nothing to do with fundamentalism or atheism. I was pointing out God did at one time directly intervene in human affairs. Discarding distasteful Biblical history in favor of your own does not erase the former; to do so is nearly tantamount to discarding the Bible wholly, without the Old Testament there would and could not be a New Testament. You miss understood me.

Do you read your own posts Steve? Apart from not making much sense, you continue with these characterisations. What makes you think that anyone here is a biblical literalist? Because the OT says that God came down and spoke with Abraham doesn't mean that we all accept that without question. I can discard whatever I like if it doesn't meet my criteria for believability because I'm not a dogmatist. It seems that you are, however, judging by your next response:

None of those things you've listed speaks directly about the physical causes of consciousness.

So the statement already assumes the physical causes of consciousness. What's the point of discussion if that is your starting point?
 
In my opinion this is one aspect of science where the question of it being valid or not is no longer useful. If I were Dr Long, I'd probably recognise this, so possibly wouldn't really care so much about being true to 'science'. Many people have suggested that conventional science just isn't capable of dealing with subjective topics, it needs to be expanded.

Surely there's something strange about proponents being so strongly attached to science as it now exists? After all is science not mainstream materialists toy, designed to follow their worldview? I'm asking this as a layman, not a scientist, but surely it's a valid question?

I don't think science can even begin to prove the existance of God as it stands, thinking about it, maybe science can't prove anything. Is everything subjective?

I think Science is a very useful tool for some things, but like Newton's mechanics it has very definite limitations. Maybe the study of consciousness can be likened to quantum physics, and won't be truly served by this paradigm.
I don't have a problem with anyone saying that science can't address these issues adequately. But Long isn't saying that, he's saying his work is scientific. It isn't.
 
Well I think most of us feel you are missing the point. Dr. Long's research provides us with a statistical breakdown of what people report in their NDE's. The rest is interpretation, but the raw statistics are valuable I think. We can all decide how to interpret the results - and I for one haven't rushed out to buy a Bible - but the raw data stands for itself - at least in a Western context.

I haven't listened to the podcast yet. From the statistical standpoint, am I correct that the sample Dr. Long is using, while large, is also self-selected (meaning retrospective and with subjects who came to the website on their own?). Does he discuss what effect he believes this might have on his results? Or for those who have read the book does he have a section where he discusses limitations of the study and mentions it there? Or did he publish a separate paper on this? I didn't find it searching google scholar.
 
I haven't listened to the podcast yet. From the statistical standpoint, am I correct that the sample Dr. Long is using, while large, is also self-selected (meaning retrospective and with subjects who came to the website on their own?). Does he discuss what effect he believes this might have on his results? Or for those who have read the book does he have a section where he discusses limitations of the study and mentions it there? Or did he publish a separate paper on this? I didn't find it searching google scholar.

I haven't listened either but I get the impression that the book is for popular consumption rather than scientific scrutiny. That doesn't mean he should be cherry picking his way through the data but I'm assuming there is more wriggle room with a book than with a scientific paper. However, I agree with you point insofar as it reinforces another comment made earlier that this second book probably takes something away from the credibility of NDE research in the scientific community.
 
I haven't listened either but I get the impression that the book is for popular consumption rather than scientific scrutiny. That doesn't mean he should be cherry picking his way through the data but I'm assuming there is more wriggle room with a book than with a scientific paper. However, I agree with you point insofar as it reinforces another comment made earlier that this second book probably takes something away from the credibility of NDE research in the scientific community.

Well, from a scientific perspective retrospective and self selected isn't necessarily invalid per se - but the limitations must be noted and the research should be clearly described as exploratory (presumably also with advice about how future studies can address those limitations).

While I haven't listened to the podcast I read just the intro and I saw that Dr. Long referred to it as a study, which suggests he views it as scientific. And that the large sample increased the level of confidence suggesting that he sees it as more than exploratory - in which case, that would be incorrect and fails to disclose an important limitation that should be brought to the reader's attention.

(again, I'm not assuming he hasn't mentioned it - he very well might have).
 
I haven't listened to the podcast yet. From the statistical standpoint, am I correct that the sample Dr. Long is using, while large, is also self-selected (meaning retrospective and with subjects who came to the website on their own?). Does he discuss what effect he believes this might have on his results? Or for those who have read the book does he have a section where he discusses limitations of the study and mentions it there? Or did he publish a separate paper on this? I didn't find it searching google scholar.
I have started to read his latest book (not the earlier one), which probably contains more details. The answer seems to be that as you say people came and reported their NDE experiences on his website.

That could be a problem - whether or not he discusses it - but it did give him a large database of NDE's. Also, I think that the issue about love features all over the place in NDE accounts, so that part isn't really new. I agree, it is conceivable that Christians added NDE accounts that seemed more Christian!

However, I don't know whether Dr Long was able to check back with the authors of the accounts or whether it was all anonymous.

David
 
Do you read your own posts Steve? Apart from not making much sense, you continue with these characterisations. What makes you think that anyone here is a biblical literalist? Because the OT says that God came down and spoke with Abraham doesn't mean that we all accept that without question. I can discard whatever I like if it doesn't meet my criteria for believability because I'm not a dogmatist. It seems that you are, however, judging by your next response:



So the statement already assumes the physical causes of consciousness. What's the point of discussion if that is your starting point?
I think you find me egregious to the point of reading more into what I write. The statement assumes nothing. I am all ears should you wish to explain in some detail why that list explains the physical origins of consciousness in a new thread.
 
When I was a medical student I did eight weeks rotation in psychiatry. It was very revealing and at times frightening. I was shocked to discover that what I thought is the subject of jokes - people imagining themselves being extra-terrestrial creatures, Napoleon, paranoid and deluded in many other ways - actually wasn't exaggerated. One patient, a woman in her 70-s, believed that he was raped by her neighbour... by X-rays that he sent through the radio. It was one of my first encounters with real medical ethics as well. Going through the details of her experience at some point the woman said something so funny that my Prof barely held back a little grin. The patient noticed it and asked: "You don't believe me, do you?", to which he replied: "I think you are telling me what you are feeling". Subtle remark that I remembered forever. Never mind that.

Apparently the delusion of being raped via TV, radio with all kinds of electro-magnetic waves is relatively common among old schizophrenic female patients. In order to study their experience we can come up with a questionnaire detailing their experience. How often, at what times, what kind of radio waves are used, the reasons for the perpetrators to engage in this action and so on. It won't be hard to collect the database of a few hundred cases. It is very likely that after analysing this data we will find common denominators of such experience and will be able to come up with the stats. Maybe we will even be able to discover some system and structure of the Radiowave Rape Experience and the hierarchy of the sources used for this purpose. Will anybody take me seriously if I will declare it the groundbreaking evidence of the phenomenon being real and that there is an evil force behind the phenomenon?

Please, before someone starts accusing me of disrespect - it is not intended.
Far from being disrespectful, I find this observation quite interesting.

Now clearly nobody can give a neurological explanation of these specific strange delusions, or why women are inclined to this particular concept in particular. The most neurology can conceivably do, is suggest some way in which ideas can get muddled together in an illogical way - but that doesn't really explain any particular regularities in the data.

Obviously busy clinicians don't delve into reports of this sort, they simply tick a box marked delusional. However, I wonder how such a patient would respond if probed (possibly an unfortunate choice of word) with questions like, "How could you tell, since radio waves are invisible?", or "Radio waves pass through everything, so what exactly do you mean by being raped by radio waves?". To my mind these reports don't sound a million miles from some of the alien abduction reports.

Are these people permanently affected in this way, or is their condition reversible?

Ideally, I think a thread that discussed the relationship of madness to psi would be a useful. I also wonder if mad patients may also exhibit inexplicable phenomena (did you ever read Irreducible Mind?).

David
 
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