Posted on 12/14/2001 5:51:34 PM PST by adakotab
Medical explanations cannot account for near death experiences (NDEs), according to the results of the biggest prospective study to date of patients who were resuscitated after clinical death. However, patients who reported an NDE were more likely to die soon afterwards.
Pim Van Lommel and his team at Hospital Rijnstate in the Netherlands interviewed 344 patients who were resuscitated after heart failure at 10 hospitals across the country. The patients were questioned as soon as they were well enough.
Eighteen per cent reported an NDE - classed as a memory of "a special state of consciousness, including specific elements such as out-of-body experience, pleasant feelings and seeing a tunnel."
But the team found no link between NDEs and drugs used to treat the patients, the duration of cardiac arrest or unconsciousness, or the patients' reports of the degree to which they feared death before the incident.
"This was the surprising thing," van Lommel says. "It's always said that NDEs are just a phenomenon relating to the dying brain and the lack of oxygen to the brain cells. But that's not true. If there was a physiological cause, all the patients should have had an NDE."
LETTING GO
The patients were mostly elderly, with an average age of 62. Van Lommel found that those that reported an NDE were significantly more likely to die within 30 days.
"There is the idea that people can decide to some extent when they die," says van Lommel. "Perhaps when they had an NDE, their fear of death was over and they could let go."
The team did find that patients who were under 60 and female were more likely to report an NDE. But the causes of the experience remain a mystery, van Lommel says.
His team questioned surviving NDE patients again two years after their resuscitation, and then after eight years. Most of the patients recalled the event in striking detail. And most showed significant psychological changes, the team reports. The 23 NDE patients who were still alive eight years later "had become more emotionally vulnerable and empathic", they write.
PUSHING THE LIMIT
Van Lommel's team report anecdotal stories of patients recalling events that happened around them during out of body experiences while they were clinically dead. These experiences "push at the limit of medical ideas about the range of human consciousness and the mind/brain relationship," Van Lommel says.
Christopher French, at the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths College, London, says the team's paper is "intriguing", though he notes that van Lommel's team failed to contact the patients for corroboration. He points out that NDEs are impossible to objectively verify - and that out of body experiences have not been proved to exist.
But, in a commentary on the research, he writes: "the out of body component of the NDE offers probably the best hope of launching any kind of attack on current concepts of the relationship between consciousness and brain function."
If researchers could prove that clinically dead patients, with no electrical activity in their cortex, can be aware of events around them and form memories, this would suggest that the brain does not generate consciousness, French and Van Lommel think.
Journal reference: The Lancet (vol 358, p 2039)
No it breaks my heart
I would wish you a Merry Christmas..but how foolish that would be......another fairy tale..have a nice secular holiday
Well, anyway, Merry Christmas to you.
IMO:
WRhine - 1
RnMomof7 - 0
Wow! your private theology really is dangerous for your soul. You and you alone get to decide which verses are really God's word and which are not. You and you alone get to pick and choose what to believe and what not to believe. Of course, you don't understand what's wrong with this.
And your "facts" about when and how the Bible was written are completely false. The NT was not written 500 years after Jesus death. Special Revelation was completed no later than about 70A.D.
So, tell me, how does Santa Clause conveigh the meaning of Christmas? We spend more time talking about the Real reason for the season than we do about a fat jolly elf! We even talk about an empty tomb during Christmas. The first is really meaningless without the second.
That is strictly my own opinion but science and historical study has already rendered big chunks of the old testament as untrue so you have to figure there are many inaccuracies in the bible. Oh and you should recheck your facts on the bible. The bible was not put together as one book for many centuries after Christ's death. By that time many of the original scriptures had gone through many different re-writes and translations. I'd think that this would be common sense given the age of the book and that Christ lived in the Middle East over 2,000 years ago. Given that, how could ANYONE believe that the bible is 100% "literally" true?
You must think there is some signifance to the Council of 393, which "determined" the canon of scripture. All scripture had been in circulation among the churches from day one. And of the 28,000 Original manuscripts dating from the first and second century, they are all in near perfect agreement. But you are free to believe that God is not powerful enough to make sure His word gets from one generation to the next. What is ironic for you is I bet you don't question the accuracy of Homer's Illiad, yet it is not even in the same league as far as manuscript evidence.
Your historical evidence (wait, I didn't see any) which proves the OT false is really laughable. Case in point: Historians once believed that some of the books could not have been written when they have been attributed. Now, historians believe that there was a written language centuries before the first 5 books were written. Another case in point: Archeologist have uncovered evidence that the walls at Jerico fell outward and not inward as one would expect from an invading army. Of course, the evidence keeps mounting that the OT is an accurate historical account.
BTW, you never answered my question: How does a jolly fat elf reflect Christmas?
Did it ever occur to you that the people of 20AD were substantially different than the people of today? Many theologians have deliberated and continue to deliberate on this very thing. People back then were primitive by today's standards and were unquestionably barbaric--every civilization, every nation. They also had a very limited ability to comprehend higher level concepts because man had yet to reach that point where education and information flourished. That does not mean that I think Christ's message is irrelevant but there is no getting around the fact that much of his Christ's teachings were directed to his audience during that time. Christ could have easily said things that his followers could never hope to comprehend. Yet if he did that, his message would not have readily spread as it did. The point being that it human nature not to believe things you can’t understand. With that in mind I choose to focus on the more positive aspects of Christ’s teachings and discount the sinner stuff that gets you bible thumpers going full tilt. That's my opinion and like you I am comfortable with it.
You mean like "Take and eat this is my body which is given up for you?"( a primitive concept you seem to have no problem with)
Pick and choose..some day Jesus will pick and choose.
In the meantime you choose what you want to believe
Actually there have been negative reports and in most cases they were individuals that attempted suicide. I have been in the medical field over 20 years, trained in the scientific method, but I have seen things I cannot explain.
Your assumption is that just because a Jew in Christ's time couldn't understand the fundamentals of silicon device physics that he is somehow handicapped to understand the simplicity of Christ's message. A better assumption would be that no one, not even today, understands spiritual things without the power of God. Of course, the Bible plainly says this, but I'd hazzard a guess that you reject this idea.
Yet if he did that, his message would not have readily spread as it did. The point being that it human nature not to believe things you can’t understand.
The message of Christ spread so fast because the early NT saints showed that Christ was more to be desired than life by making the ground wet with their blood. They filled up in their flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ. And because it pleased God to change hearts and open people's eyes to understand the difficult messages in the Bible.
So, tell me, how does a jolly fat elf reflect the Christmas message?
Interesting. Thanks!
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