Newsweek Magazine ,Oct 8, 2012
This article is worth reading, whether you believe in God and heaven or not. I consider myself agnostic but certain experiences in my life have totally bewildered me and I could not find any scientific explanation for such experiences. I don’t claim any near-death experiences but real life experiences.
“As a neurosurgeon, I did not believe in the phenomenon of near-death experiences. I grew up in a scientific world, the son of a neurosurgeon. I followed my father’s path and became an academic neurosurgeon, teaching at Harvard Medical School and other universities. I understand what happens to the brain when people are near death, and I had always believed there were good scientific explanations for the heavenly out-of-body journeys described by those who narrowly escaped death.” Dr. Eben Alexander -Dr. Eben Alexander has been a neurosurgeon for the past 25 years
Read the full article here.
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I was waiting for Sam Harris to respond to the Newsweek article (which I had a good feeling that he would.) Sam Harris is an well known atheist author, but more importantly, he also happens to be a neuroscientist. For his response article, he also checked with his former thesis advisor - just to be thorough.
ReplyDeleteHis response is here. Short version: people who are in a coma are unconscious, not dead. Their brain cells are all still functioning. Furthermore, other people have reported dreaming while they were in a coma.
Conclusion? There's nothing about Dr Alexander's experience that disproves a naturalistic worldview.
As a bonus, Sam Harris also compares Dr Alexander's description to the experiences people have on the drug DMT. He's not the only one to make that comparison. DMT also happens to occur naturally in the human brain.
UnEvil One, you make interesting points. I believe I did read Sam Harris comments. Yet human mind is an extraordinary organ. It monitors every little discomfort in human body even if it is a small needle prick on your little finger.
ReplyDeleteHowever, when the whole body is in distress and a person is in a comma that very brain plays the role of a ‘cheerleader’ in order to protect vital organs. Call this experience ‘heaven’ or whatever yet it is extraordinary. Were all the people who had such an experience were on DMT? I don’t know.