I think it is likely you do not understand that NDEs are a medical anomaly.

I already responded to this:
The problem is that you need a functioning brain to have an hallucination. Blood flow, electrical activity etc. – which is not there during some people’s “actual death experiences”.
These people who do not have a functional brain are simply not medically capable of any degree of awareness, including perception and memory-formation.
Actually, there is no medical explanation for perception occurring during such a "sad state" of "brain death" and it is the same story with memory formation and therefore hallucination; your claim that memories can somehow form during brain death is totally unscientific; unlike the skeptical theory, I will substantiate my claim by citing researchers. These researchers claim that if people have these memories without the use of the brain's functions, then it SUGGESTS that consciousness is NOT produced by the brain.

New Scientist: "No Medical Explanation For Near-Death Experiences"
Guess what, that is exactly what happened in the AWARE study! The patient was aware of a sound and formed a memory about it up to 3 minutes after "clinical death"; Parnia uses "actual death experience" as the more accurate term from a medical perspective. Also, the patient reported no pain upon being shocked, this confirms that his brain was not only unconscious, it was totally non-functional at that time.
Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20070621123534/http://neardeath.home.comcast.net/nde/001_pages/18.html

There is strong empirical evidence that the personality survives death; if you study the 52 points of evidence I linked, it will likely convince you of that. What YOU personally think about death is not important since it is not based upon any scientific evidence. NDE research has show that your experience "up there" reflects your present beliefs, expectations, and level of awareness. In the here and now you can shape what happens after you die.

Hi,
You quoted:
"the reason hallucinations seem so real 'is that they deploy the very same systems in the brain that actual perceptions do.'"
This means that the brain systems responsible for actual perception would have to be active and functional during a period of brain death in order to produce an NDE under the "really-perceived hallucination" framework proposed by you and Thonnard. NDEs occurring after 30 seconds of cardiac arrest (during brain death) have been reported before, and also recently:
In the AWARE study, consciousness and awareness appeared to occur during a three-minute period when there was no heartbeat. This is paradoxical, since the brain typically ceases functioning within 20-30 seconds of the heart stopping and doesn’t resume again until the heart has been restarted.
Will either you or Dr. Sacks please explain how could there be hallucination for 3 minutes if there is "typically" no possibility of perception after the first 30 seconds of cardiac arrest? How can the patient in the study "remember being shocked" when he does not remember feeling pain from the shock (while he was unconscious)? And furthermore, how can the memory of a hallucination that is "more real" (per Thonnard) than a real memory be produced under conditions when the brain is literally "offline"? Even the basic functions of memory-formation and perception is a lot to ask for a body under CPR and a brainstem that isn’t furnishing a gag reflex (or even one which has newly just recovered such a reflex).

So let's put gag reflexes aside and focus clearly on the possibility (if any) of awareness and apparent conscious function under the physiology of a brain which is offline. Do these theories actually provide us with such a possibility? These theories are not scientific because they do not address the results of the AWARE study which provided one example of the kind of realistic OBEs which show that NDEs cannot be explained by brain chemistry alone.

As I mentioned in my other posts in this thread, the "dying brain" and "illusory hallucination" theories are not scientific. The brain needs oxygen to create hallucinations; someone who lacks a gag reflex due to cardiac arrest will not be able to form memories, that is why NDE in the AWARE study cannot be explained by brain chemistry alone.

If your methods work, then I have a great domain that you can develop; I will loan you 95% of the value in bitcoin for every dollar of profit I receive from it, up to a limit. Contact me through PM.

So you are saying that the Bible was re-written to finally read the way it was supposed to be read? I think that is very narrow thinking.

If the Bible was a perfect book, it would have included the Book of Jasher; reading that book would have given the people knowledge about the banking system, but still that book was excluded deliberately. Since this knowledge was left out of the Bible, the American people were kept in the dark; they did not rise up to stop the embezzlement of the nation under the Federal Reserve Banks. We have all been misguided regarding banking truth; that is the saddest part of religion, that it has indoctrinated so many to believe in their happy slavery under the bankers. We were supposed to read the Bible like a little child; a child always asks "why?"; the churches have misled us and now we don't understand the banking system at all! This Bible is surely responsible for the spiritual decay of this nation, already one hundred years under the bankers' slavery system and hardly a pastor will talk about the banking system. Christians should read about what was left out of the Bible; only by knowing could we teach our fellow brothers about the truth that they may have missed.

This is not to change the subject, but to generate awareness about the evidence supporting life after death and the possibility of God. According to Thonnard et. al in PLOS ONE (2013):

“This suggests that memories of NDEs are flashbulb memories of really perceived hallucinations. Although the similarities of NDEs with hallucinations are striking, further research is needed to characterize the relationship between these phenomena more precisely. Finally, additional neuroimaging studies are needed in order to better understand the neural signature of NDEs.”
This is a “working hypothesis”, and if this is falsified (which is science) then what else is left? If “really perceived hallucinations” are falsified? The problem is that you need a functioning brain to have an hallucination. Blood flow, electrical activity etc. – which is not there during some people’s “actual death experiences”.
It seems that one possibility is something going on in the brain much deeper than can be detected at present and this may be able to “save”, in some way, the current brain-mind paradigm. But I don’t know how this then explains tunnels, meeting dead relatives, enhanced perceptions, clarity, life review…
Why should all that go on?
Hence,
Even if NDE elements can be reduced to only a series of brain reactions, this does not negate the idea that NDEs are more than a brain thing. Since you listed "saw a divine being" or "brain pumping out chemicals" as the two possibilities from a scientific perspective; what is the result?

It's not a random story at all! Events witnessed and heard by NDErs while in an out-of-body state are almost always realistic and their observations are almost always confirmed as completely accurate.

Why is it that verification of seeing what a doctor that walks in a room wore, or seeing a shoe from a ledge, or other cases is not enough? A physical marker like audio stimuli is good enough to show that these experiences are not hallucinations and false memory. That is what happened in this study.

Also, you can see in point #52 on the near-death site another study that was done which showed that "Memories of Near-Death Experiences are More Real Than Normal Memories": not only were the NDEs not similar to the memories of imagined events, but the phenomenological characteristics inherent to the memories of real events (e.g. memories of sensorial details) are even more numerous in the memories of NDE than in the memories of real events.

Actually, NDEs cannot be explained by brain chemistry alone.


Even if NDE elements can be reduced to only a series of brain reactions, this does not negate the idea that NDEs are more than a brain thing. Actually, this AWARE research study certainly suggests that the brain does not generate consciousness; it provides an example of the many veridical cases which cannot be explained by the current mind-brain paradigm.

Actually, research indicates the opposite.

A large scientific study determined that veridical perception during brain-death is a scientific fact. Consciousness and awareness appeared to occur during a three-minute period when there was no heartbeat. This is paradoxical, since the brain typically ceases functioning within 20-30 seconds of the heart stopping and doesn’t resume again until the heart has been restarted. Furthermore, the detailed recollections of visual awareness in this case were consistent with verified events.

Press release:
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2014/10/07-worlds-largest-near-death-experiences-study.page#.VDa5LhaOqSo.

Perhaps atheists like YOU are simply refusing to acknowledge the scientific evidence for what it is?? This is not the first time that I have presented this evidence to you, RodeoX.

Scientific evidence supporting near-death experiences and the afterlife:
http://www.near-death.com/science/evidence.html

Many weeks ago, I loaned the OP some coins; I gave him some rules for his trading, but he did not follow them and ended up losing all the coins. OP never returned my bitcoin.

Actually, MMH; I am not ignoring anything; here are the points that I made and YOU did not respond:



And here is another BIG point:
The Bible has been re-written and modified.

Actually, it is a big deception; he never said it was OK to dump your wicked actions upon him or anyone else.
You want to be sovereign? Take some responsibility for your own actions!

So, you believe that because you are a Christian?
Then are mistaken; a Christian follows the New Commandment (example of Jesus) and nothing more.
A misinformed person will think that Jesus is a savior, but he never once suggested that he was your "savior"; in fact, he said that the kingdom of God is not "here or there", i.e. in Jesus, but it is within YOU. The churches have misinformed the people. There were over 28 full gospels written and known. A scholar from South Germany chose the four which were placed into your New Testament--need I say more? How can you continue to be so narrow?

Don't forget that time that God asked his righteous servant Abraham to sacrifice his only son, apparently just to see if he would do it:

The Binding of Isaac is a story from the Hebrew Bible in which God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, on Mount Moriah.

The story is apparently pure fiction because GOD does not EVER terrorize children; anyone with a conscience can understand that GOD would NEVER make a child suffer just to teach the child's father a lesson; from this fictitious story it can be plainly seen that the Bible is tampered. I urge all to study the Phoenix Journals in order to have a better understanding of GOD's plan and not to be misled by those who placed these kinds of stories in the Bible in an effort to deceive you and prevent your finding the truth.

Interesting post. I saw in bitcoin magazine that Blockstream will enable instant transactions between exchanges via bitcoin sidechains. Do you think it would be fairly simple to build, let us say an app using Darkchain as the sidechain to do the kind of transactions described in this link? I think this is what the API will help with; is that right? I have heard sidechains promoted as a separate layer of improvement the bitcoin protocol; do you think the API will easily allow you to make an app that allows Darkcoin sidechains that integrate/work with Bitcoin sidechains? I think if the API has easy integration with bitcoin, that could be a big selling point; these private sidechains could be the start of something amazing, I think it could be used for smart contracts if I am not mistaken? Like Counterparty? And especially if there is a GUI app builder/generator and decentralized app launcher that allows you to easily mimic the Blockstream solution (for instant transactions), I think that if it could all be very nicely integrated in a GUI, then literally anyone will be able to make their own sidechain networks for potentially even MORE (or maximum?) decentralized instantaneous transactions via sidechain and it will potentially create many special use cases of DASH; I am curious if this is also being planned? I like the idea of sidechains, and if I could easily create and use/implement a sidechain, that is a big asset for DASH crypto in my opinion.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/blockstream-to-launch-first-instant-settlement-sidechain-for-bitcoin-exchanges-1444755147

OK, if this is about logic, then it must be a type of debate; let us carefully examine your unfortunate errors together...

OK, I agree. Now I am going to write in large paragraphs because each of the following paragraphs (5 total) is a succinct rebuttal/antithesis that I would like you to address; I will continue to summarize, simplify, and shorten points so that they are more succinct and organized as our discussion goes on, just like we have done before; most of the items below which are in quotes are from the Bible, but I have omitted the citations; to those who are not familiar with the Bible, and to you, BADecker, I think it would help to look up these phrases and read the whole chapter containing them... Now, let us see the result of this "logical debate" right here and now:
Why do you think it is possible to make another God when you are God? When God Creates, the result is Creation. When you realize "I and my father are one" in your own life, then you will "have just a little faith and be able to move a mountain into the ocean". See, it always comes down to being responsible. God gave this gift to YOU, and if you try to return God's gift to the one he sent as a messenger, well that is no different from trying to go to the bank and instead thinking the bank is at the post office; that is no different from disputing an escrowed transaction with the third party instead of "settling with thy adversary", no different from "being a servant of your Master and hiding your (Master's) gifts/talents in the ground" (Matt. 25). God's Kingdom is within you, so those "riches stored up in heaven" are probably within you as well, you just have to "access your inheritance" as a "joint-heir" (brother) with 'the Christ' ("cosmic Christ" or energy, and YES, ESU IS AN EXTRATERRESTRIAL, HOW ELSE DO YOU THINK HE CAN COME? and his name is Sananda (ONE WITH GOD); HE describes in some of the Journals his past experiences as one named Emmanuel, but Esu doesn't object to being called "Jesus" if the intent be toward Christ being). You don't need a co-redemptress (Virgin Mary) and you should not worship the messenger because he said that "God's kindgom is not here" and it is "not of this world", but it is "inside of you" (and by the way, this part is detailed in the Gnostic gospels that were conveniently left out of your studies), I can only point you to the truth, but you must study it and "see the logic" for yourself; if you protest about "Biblical authority", I can only think that your authority comes from a very NARROW and TAMPERED perspective that does not fit in with a holistic (whole) view of the life of JESUS.

This part of your "logic" is quite funny to me; you say that it is in the Bible that "you are a God" and that this is so "at least" "according to" my logic? Are you not the one who claims that the Bible is complete truth and supreme? I am the one who claims it is Holey as in "full of holes" and that you need to use a proper understanding in filling it in, like in understanding WHO God is and that you are the one who works miracles "greater than these". That book has been used to teach evil (e.g. story of Isaac) and the enemy has had a long time to corrupt a great many things in that book, the "interpretation" of the churches (and this includes you, BADecker) is based on a VERY NARROW set of Gospels, obviously excluding PJ #2, which is THE ONLY COMPLETELY VALID GOSPEL. So obviously the KING JAMES Bible, Book of Mormon, and other "BIBLES" are not the best one(s) to look at if you are trying to understand God, and that Biblical "WORD" is not inerrant for it is tampered and made from the hands of many men, it is not the true WORD for GOD IS THE WORD, the "talk of the town" is that GOD'S KINGDOM IS WITHIN YOU and “Jesus Christ knew he was God. So wake up and find out eventually who you really are. In our culture, of course, they’ll say you’re crazy and you’re blasphemous, and they’ll either put you in jail or in a nut house (which is pretty much the same thing). However if you wake up in India and tell your friends and relations, ‘My goodness, I’ve just discovered that I’m God,’ they’ll laugh and say, ‘Oh, congratulations, at last you found out'.” (Alan Watts, The Essential Alan Watts) Well, then INDEED you are GOD so YOU are supreme, or at least you will "be blessed" with GRACE if you wisely use your supreme power to "seriously understand and be responsible to Heavenly Father's Laws" (Psalms 1). That is the plain-spoken message of the OT; at least according to these two quotes I discern thusly, so what is wrong with my logic HERE? Your interpretation matters not a bit if it is not LOGICAL; that OT says that we are CHILDREN OF GOD... HE IS THE FATHER, WE ARE THE "SONS"; only through "THE SON" can GOD'S KINGDOM COME; that means all of humanity and it also means YOU, so who are you to designate one member of humanity ("Jesus") as GOD if that ONE is not YOU (ONE WITH YOU)? That ONE (Sananda) who bears a new name is ONE WITH GOD because he has had to learn his own lessons and grow into his ONENESS by understanding... HIS ONENESS!... SO THESE THREE ALL MEAN THE SAME THING: "I AND THE FATHER ARE ONE" AND "THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS WITHIN YOU" AND "YOU ARE ALL CHILDREN OF GOD". GOD GAVE YOU SOVEREIGNTY, BUT YOU SHALL NOT GIVE IT UP UNTO ANOTHER NOR SHALL YOU DUMP YOUR EVIL ACTIONS UPON ONE YOU LABEL "GOD" OR "CHRIST", FOR EACH ONE MUST BE RESPONSIBLE TO FATHER AND "ONLY THROUGH THE CHRIST PATH (I.E. PURENESS IN HEART) SHALL YOU SEE THE FATHER" AND YOU CAN ONLY BE A "SON OF GOD" IF YOU ARE A "PEACEMAKER", NOT ONE WHO "MAKES A GROUP" (CULT) TO DIVIDE SELF FROM ALL; YOU SHOULD NOT FORGET THAT JESUS WAS YOUR BROTHER BECAUSE YOU BOTH CAME FROM THE FATHER.

Well, in "making" that you are making a CULT; that is YOUR CREATION. I strongly suggest you go back and read PJ #29 about cults.

That is a mistake because "Jesus" is NOT YOUR GOD, HE IS YOUR BROTHER, as STATED PLAINLY in the quote that you misunderstood, and this is ALSO understood by the above three famous quotes from the OT and NT; it is very saddening to me that you are not aware of more of the Journals, especially that you have so far refused to read the only valid Gospel despite being such a big "follower of Jesus"; I hope to open your eyes just a bit, my brother and that you can see why my intentions are honest, but to be TOTALLY honest I don't want to waste much time in the discussion for I have "beams that I need to pull out of my own eye"; I pray and act upon my hope that you come to the light, my brother; I have heart and I am just glad that we can continue our discussion until mutual satisfaction, for you are not my adversary, and I wish you the best, I pity your confusion and hope you "come to your senses", and get on board with the truth as taught by that Teacher, of grace, or God-consciousness, or enlightenment.

I hope there is no "trouble", my friend; I am always happy to discuss my perspective with you; I hope you will see that my opinions here are logical and that the message of these two books are not only similar but also fairly different; I think the difference is most clearly apparent to anyone who even reads this one post of mine on our discussion, but especially for those who can realize their own sovereignty and who will refuse to surrender that power to a book, even if it is from God's Messenger. I am not sure about what the Bible says about it but I think God has sent MANY Messengers, but I doubt that only God's Messengers were involved in creating the Bible; it seems to me that man does a lot more bad than good on this planet, and that the society we have now is in danger of collapse as a direct result of the moral collapse that has gone on, but the solution is not "old time religion"; we need to realize our power, so let us reach out to truth and God; after all, to be a Christian means that you follow Christ's Jesus's example and his Law (teaching; Christ path); to be Christian means you know how to move a mountain, and you can also "do greater things" (and if there is any confusion, you can just "seek out the truth and find it"!), and this is because you will know that "I and the Father are one", but you do not need to identify "Christ Jesus" as your "savior" to be a PEACEMAKER, for behold, he never did ONCE suggest that he was your "savior"; he plainly told us that we are all Gods and brothers, and that we needed to repent for our wicked deeds, he never said that we could dump those wicked deeds onto him and get mercy by his deed or his death or anything like that; why don't you read PJ #2 and tell me where in THAT Gospel you can find support for such an interpretation?? I hope to make peace with you, my brother, I want to help you and convince you that I am a follower of the Christ Way, BROTHER; I wish to mention again that you should read Journal #27 about "GOD'S INSTRUCTION MANUAL" and that if you have any disagreement with the rules in that book then we can easily discuss what is essential to "being blessed and understanding God's Law" (Psalms 1), for I think you will not get such a deep understanding of the Journals (LET ALONE THE BIBLE) from what little I have posted here about them.

That is interesting; I have brought to this thread's attention that the relationship between understanding and forgiveness is best understood by rejecting the church's interpretation of the teachings of Jesus regarding forgiveness and instead realizing that Jesus's teachings speak to the individual who wants to find God as a personal experience, to attain what some might call grace, or God-consciousness, or enlightenment. An enlightened one is one who understands, but forgiveness is also understood by the concept of grace, which is related to mercy, and as I have stated before the key to understanding forgiveness is to realize that "God's Kingdom is WITHIN YOU". Forgiveness is elusive, perhaps somewhat like Jesus is elusive, but Jesus did not come to forgive anyone; he never suggested that he was anyone's savior but rather he said that "God's Kingdom is WITHIN YOU". The "cosmic Christ" is the spiritual guide whose teaching embraces all humanity, not just the church built in his name (and his name never was "Jesus", it was Emmanuel, Yeshua, and Esu). Christianity needs to overcome its tendency to be exclusionary and refocus on being a religion of personal insight and spiritual growth. In this way Jesus can be seen for the universal teacher he truly is--someone whose teachings of compassion, tolerance, and understanding can embrace and be embraced by all of us.

My posts about grace in this thread: Comment replying to the post of vero with a long quote from Phoenix Journlas
Comment replying to MMH about the "cosmic Christ" and the dangers of the Bible
and many times in this thread I have quoted Phoenix Journal #32, titled I AND MY FATHER ARE ONE -- Pleiades Connection Vol. III, which gives lengthy discussion on all these topics. I hope both Christians and non-theists alike can tolerate a brief pause in their thinking and take some time to explore these posts and books to get a better idea about understanding, forgiveness, and grace "from the horse's mouth", as I have mentioned in this reply to sorryforthat regarding non-theism, it is important to dedicate yourself to the search for knowledge if you care about discovering the truth for yourself; in that post it is mentioned that we each have our own truth, and to develop that in oneself is a part of awakening (enlightenment); in spirituality, it always comes down to being responsible for your own awakening.

BADecker, you are the one who is being illogical. You have claimed:
your Phoenix Journals express the Bible to be supreme
BUT that quote above does not even use the world "Bible", as you have claimed. You cannot idly conclude that these books say something that they do not really say. So where is the logic??

Please, carefully observe my use of reason to correct your false claim, and tell me where I am wrong in case I am not being logical.

You are claiming that there is a "God of the Bible".
I am not so sure that all of the stories in the Bible are true depictions of God; in fact, I think your claim that the Bible is "supreme" (as in supremely true) is very obviously false, and I will make 2 points in this regard:
1) There were over 28 full gospels written and known. A scholar from South Germany chose the four which were placed into your New Testament--need I say more? How can you continue to be so narrow?
2) It has been tampered with on numerous occasions.

This discussion is not about what your NAME is for GOD, it is about the BIBLE; when you say "God of the Bible", you have to realize the logical comments 1 and 2 above; in fact these 2 points are straight out of the Phoenix Journals, so how can the Bible be "supreme"??

Is it not logical that an obvious instance of tampering is the story in the Bible where God terrorizes a child (Isaac) in order to teach the child's father "a lesson"? Anyone can see that there is no way that a God who is good would do this. Maybe that is why atheists "hate religion" and one of the famous atheists wrote a book titled "God is not Great" to make that very point. I don't think man needs books and I think you are misled by that Bible because it has been perverted by the enemy (antichrist). Instead of trying to address how the story is talking about a God of goodness, you should realize what has really happened to that book; your claim that it is "supreme" is simply not logical!

By the way, I have made another poignant post on the "logic" of surrendering your discernment to the Bible, in response to MMH:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1054513.msg12681698#msg12681698

Making a to-do list every day and keeping a journal to track your goals.

Since you won't quote the text that validates your point, I will assume that your claim is false.

Another false claim relates to the story in the Bible where God terrorizes a child (Isaac) in order to teach the child's father "a lesson". Anyone can see that there is no way that a God who is good would do this. Maybe that is why atheists "hate religion" and one of the famous atheists wrote a book titled "God is not Great" to make that very point. I don't think man needs books and I think you are misled by that Bible because it has been perverted by the enemy (antichrist).