I want to believe in these. I really, really do. And over the last few months, as thoughts of eternal nothingness have gripped me with terror every hour of every day, I've found some comfort in reading about them. After all, they involve something real. No one doubts that people who report NDE's experienced something. The only question is -- what "part" of them was doing the experiencing?
From what I can tell, those who believe NDE's are a glimpse of an afterlife witnessed by the soul stress a few key points:
1) Those who experience them return to their bodies profoundly changed -- more spiritual, more altruistic, liberated from their fear of death. This kind of marked transformation doesn't accompany typical hallucinations, like those induced by LSD.
2) Science can't explain why people have experienced NDE's when they are registering no brain activity whatsoever, or how some people -- those on the operating table, for instance -- have woken up and reported details that they never should have known (about things that were said or equipment that was used while they were unconscious).
I don't think either one of these is much to cling to, though, in terms of believing NDE's are evidence of an afterlife. Here how I (regrettably) have come to view this topic:
1) NDE's are real, but they take place in the brain, not some unattached soul. I say this because (a) science has explained much (but not all) of the NDE/out-of-body phenomenon. The white light that many report can be medically induced. So can out-of-body-experiences, which are triggered by a part of the brain misfiring. This doesn;t explain everything, but it does explain a lot -- and all of this has been learned in just the past 20 years. So it seems to me that we're on our way to understanding NDE's as phenomena of the brain. It will take time; we are still discovering how incomprehensibly complex the brain is. But we are getting there.
2) The "profound emotional changes" that people experience post-NDE are undeniable, but don't really mean anything. Why? Because the NDE, as I already acknowledged, is VERY real to the person who goes through it. Let's say a person has a heart attack, feels him or herself slipping from consciousness, realizes fully that death is probably at hand....and then has an NDE and wakes up. Given how real the NDE felt, of course this person is going to believe that it was experienced outside the body. And the implications of believing that -- wow, there really is a soul and an afterlife! -- should trigger the exact kind of life changes that NDE believers tout. It really doesn't mean anything that someone who has a drug-indiced hallucination wouldn't go through these life changes; that person wouldn't think he/she was dying, and therefore wouldn't vest the hallucinatory experience with the kind of profound, life-altering significance that someone who goes through an NDE would. But the same basic thing is going on.
Also, just think of how vivid our normal, nightly dreams can be. I had one last night that involved me talking to someone who, as far as I know, I've never met before. We were in a place I didn't recognize and I was asking him questions. I'm not sure why. He was very cryptic in his responses, and I remember feeling incredible frustration that I couldn't find a way to ask him a question that would elicit a more digestible response. His answers were also very figurative. My point is that this seemed very real. I could "hear" his voice, "see" the details of his face, and "feel" the frustration of trying to get answers. I have had thousands of vivid and "real" dreams like this in my life. So have you. But we have no problem chalking this up to the mind. We know that we dream when we sleep. We can create dreams that are just as vivid and powerful and real as NDE's. The connection seems so obvious. The fact that we can dream such random but real dreams is a clue that something similar is going on in NDE's.
3) Randomness of NDE's. Sure, many people report a basic pattern of: Being outside of their body, moving toward a white light, watching a "life review," being filled with incredible feelings of love, and meeting dead loved ones, then returning to their bodies. But the more you read up on people's experiences, the more you realize how random they are. Some NDE's are explicitly religious, with images of heaven and/or hell. Some involve meeting Jesus or God. Some involve receiving detailed revelations from God or Jesus. (Many who have returned with these revelations have later had them discredited -- like claims that the world will end in a certain year.) One man reported being sent to hell and watching Jesus cry and explain that he could do nothing to save the man, since he'd rejected him in life. But others describe Jesus saving them from hell. And plenty of atheists -- who by definition rejected Jesus and God in life -- report that their experience had nothing to do with hell; that they were filled with love and wanted to stay. There are even NDE experiences taht have nothing to do with God or an afterlife; some report finding themselves on space ships communicating with aliens. Others report only having out-of-body-experiences, with no "journey" anywhere. And, of course, most who are legally dead and come back report absolutely nothing.
Isn't it obvious what this means? It makes sense that most who have NDE's experience some kind of "afterlife." This is logical because that person's last conscous thoughts were "I am going to die." So they go unconscious and their mind conjures some kind of afterlife experience. That explains all of the contradictions between the afterlife experiences that have been reported. Some are told that hell is real and that many people will go there. Others are shown that heaven is universal, open to everyone (like atheists). Some receive specific religious instruction. Others learn that "only love" matters. There really is not way to tie all these together. Some fundamentalists Christians have used NDE's to write books about the existence of hell. Other liberal Christians have used other NDE's to prove that God and heaven are universal. They are all over the place!
I say: People who went through believed they were dying, so naturally their minds created some kind of afterlife scenario (for most of them). The OBE and white light aspect is explained scientifically. The details of their journeys are self-created. The feelings of comfort that they (mostly) return with are perfectly logical. But, like my vivid dream last night, it's all in the head. No, science can't explain every feature of the NDE right now. But it's explained some of it, and the most logical thing that can be said is that science will explain the rest as knowledge progresses.
I really wish I could believe. But the closer I look at NDE's, the more I'm convinced they show no evidence of an afterlife.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Why Richard Dawkins Pisses Me Off
I’m launching this blog because I can’t escape thoughts of death – and more specifically the sheer terror of the eternal state of non-existence that, I am rationally convinced, comes with it. I sit around Googling all sorts of terms (this morning: “intellectual critique of Richard Dawkins”) that I hope might somehow produce a new perspective that offers some hope – some rational, reasonable basis for believing that the death of my brain will not mark the death of my consciousness.
But to no avail. This is all I think about. The depression is overwhelming. I might as well write about it, since reading up on it has done nothing for me (except, alas, to further erode what little deistic hope I’d allowed myself through the years).
This fear has been with me, at times more pronounced than others, since I was around 7 years old. Even back then, when I would have matter-of-factly told anyone who’d asked that I believed in God (just like I believed in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy), I somehow grasped at some more basic level that death must necessarily be what life was like before I was born: Complete nothingness. When I focused on this (generally late at night), I would bolt from my bed in a panic and run frantically to my parents’ room, jumping into the bed between them. Then I’d calm down and fall back asleep. At 7, I could at least comfort myself with the thought that death was a long way off – the idea that I’d be 80 years old someday seemed almost preposterous.
Now I’m 29 years old. I am stunned at how quickly the time has passed. I can still vividly recall minute details from 15 and 20 years ago. 1998 – fully ten years ago now – feels like it took place just a few weeks back. My father was 41 when I was 7 – only 12 years older than I am now. My cousin was just starting college. Now she’s 41. When I was 7, I at least had the comfort that life was long – almost too long to comprehend. Now I know better. If I live another 29 years, I’ll be 58. 58 seemed so old when I was a child – but now I understand how the years add up. And 29 more after 58 would be 87 – a very long life by any reasonable measure. And then…an eternity of nothingness. I can feel my time here – the only conscious existence I will ever know for all eternity – ticking away. I can focus on little else. (This latest round of thanatophobia seemed to be triggered by my 29th birthday, at the end of August. Before then, I’d gone through a relatively tranquil 5 years or so of pushing thoughts of death to the back of my mind, like most people seem to.)
Obviously, there are plenty of sites on the Web dealing with these subjects. But I think there’s a void, too, since they mostly fall into two broad categories: (1) Those that encourage belief in a specific religious faith, a higher power in general, or some sort of spiritual system in which the “soul” of a human being lives on after the death of the body (sites dealing with near-death experiences, for instance); or (2) Those that proudly and merrily declare their atheism and rejoice in debunking the “logic” behind any supernatural set of beliefs.
I find neither of these categories satisfying.
I want badly (with an intensity I can’t adequately convey with words) to be one of the believers, but I find their arguments flimsy and maddeningly simple to discredit. But unlike most of the atheist voices I have encountered on the Web, I don’t regard this as cause for celebration and do not delight in ridiculing “theist-tards” and “Christ-heads.” While I acknowledge that, as best I can tell, the atheists are correct on the basic facts of our existence, I take no comfort in this. Instead, it terrifies, panics, and depresses me. (For instance, watching Richard Dawkins respond to Christian critics in this video led me to (a) nod my head in agreement at his logic and clear-thinking and (b) to cancel my plans last Friday night and sit on my couch, fighting back a panic attack as the final flicker of hope buried deep within me was extinguished.)
I have heard, over and over, the typical atheist response to questions about death. It’s nothing to be feared, they all say, because you won’t feel a thing. To which I reply: You fucking moron, that’s EXACTLY what I’m afraid of! Any relationship, any friendship, any personal connection I forge in my life will be instantly and irretrievably severed for eternity. All memories will be extinguished for eternity. All knowledge. All hope. All joy. All thought. All consciousness. Gone. Forever. There is nothing peaceful or serene or restful about this. It is the loneliest concept I can comprehend. Eternal, solitary nothingness. We’re not talking about 20,000, or 20,000,0000 or 20,000,000,000 years here. We’re talking about eternity. I am terrified of this. Utterly terrified. I find the atheist line to be a rationalization.
Another popular atheist talking point is that, since the void of death is final and non-negotiable, we ought to simply live our lives to the fullest, enjoy every day, carpe diem, etc. On the surface this is an attractive philosophy and makes sense (sort of like religious faith, I guess). But I don’t buy it. To me, the idea of living a happy and fulfilled life simply makes the prospect of death – losing all of that happiness and fulfillment and surrendering to solitary non-existence for eternity – that much worse. Better, it seems, to live a depressed, sorrowful life; then, at least, death may not seem so bad. I can't be happy knowing that I face an eternity of nothingness that will never end. It haunts me wherever I go, sapping my life of enjoyment.
But oh, the atheists counter, that’s too narrow and selfish a view: There’s your family, your children, their children, and the world itself to consider: Devote your life to improving the lives of the people around you and you will have served a purpose (and will live on through them and through whatever work you did). Again, I don’t get it. Your kids will grow up and die too, their hopes, dreams, and memories eviscerated forever. And so will their kids. If you contribute something to the culture, maybe it will survive a few generations, perhaps even a few hundred years – more, if your contribution is particularly noteworthy. But that is nothing compared to the timeline of human existence. Your contribution will ultimately be lost and forgotten as well. And so, eventually, will all of humanity. The fate of the universe, it seems, is either to retract in a big crunch or to die out because of too much expansion. There is no point to any of this, or any of us. There is no purpose in improving or contributing to human advancement – or to the happiness of an individual. It is all an illusion. The only thing that is real is the nothingness that preceded our own existences and the nothingness that will follow them.
Dawkins, in one of his videos, takes religion to task for scaring kids with images of hell and eternal damnation. I guess he has a point. But as a kid, I was never worried that much about hell. It was Dawkins’ own vision of eternal nothingness that sent me, screaming and running, into my parents’ room late at night.
Therein lies my problem with atheists. I get and accept that they are correct (although, I imagine, some part of me will always yearn for some other explanation for life for as long as I live). What I don’t get is why they are so damned happy about it.
But to no avail. This is all I think about. The depression is overwhelming. I might as well write about it, since reading up on it has done nothing for me (except, alas, to further erode what little deistic hope I’d allowed myself through the years).
This fear has been with me, at times more pronounced than others, since I was around 7 years old. Even back then, when I would have matter-of-factly told anyone who’d asked that I believed in God (just like I believed in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy), I somehow grasped at some more basic level that death must necessarily be what life was like before I was born: Complete nothingness. When I focused on this (generally late at night), I would bolt from my bed in a panic and run frantically to my parents’ room, jumping into the bed between them. Then I’d calm down and fall back asleep. At 7, I could at least comfort myself with the thought that death was a long way off – the idea that I’d be 80 years old someday seemed almost preposterous.
Now I’m 29 years old. I am stunned at how quickly the time has passed. I can still vividly recall minute details from 15 and 20 years ago. 1998 – fully ten years ago now – feels like it took place just a few weeks back. My father was 41 when I was 7 – only 12 years older than I am now. My cousin was just starting college. Now she’s 41. When I was 7, I at least had the comfort that life was long – almost too long to comprehend. Now I know better. If I live another 29 years, I’ll be 58. 58 seemed so old when I was a child – but now I understand how the years add up. And 29 more after 58 would be 87 – a very long life by any reasonable measure. And then…an eternity of nothingness. I can feel my time here – the only conscious existence I will ever know for all eternity – ticking away. I can focus on little else. (This latest round of thanatophobia seemed to be triggered by my 29th birthday, at the end of August. Before then, I’d gone through a relatively tranquil 5 years or so of pushing thoughts of death to the back of my mind, like most people seem to.)
Obviously, there are plenty of sites on the Web dealing with these subjects. But I think there’s a void, too, since they mostly fall into two broad categories: (1) Those that encourage belief in a specific religious faith, a higher power in general, or some sort of spiritual system in which the “soul” of a human being lives on after the death of the body (sites dealing with near-death experiences, for instance); or (2) Those that proudly and merrily declare their atheism and rejoice in debunking the “logic” behind any supernatural set of beliefs.
I find neither of these categories satisfying.
I want badly (with an intensity I can’t adequately convey with words) to be one of the believers, but I find their arguments flimsy and maddeningly simple to discredit. But unlike most of the atheist voices I have encountered on the Web, I don’t regard this as cause for celebration and do not delight in ridiculing “theist-tards” and “Christ-heads.” While I acknowledge that, as best I can tell, the atheists are correct on the basic facts of our existence, I take no comfort in this. Instead, it terrifies, panics, and depresses me. (For instance, watching Richard Dawkins respond to Christian critics in this video led me to (a) nod my head in agreement at his logic and clear-thinking and (b) to cancel my plans last Friday night and sit on my couch, fighting back a panic attack as the final flicker of hope buried deep within me was extinguished.)
I have heard, over and over, the typical atheist response to questions about death. It’s nothing to be feared, they all say, because you won’t feel a thing. To which I reply: You fucking moron, that’s EXACTLY what I’m afraid of! Any relationship, any friendship, any personal connection I forge in my life will be instantly and irretrievably severed for eternity. All memories will be extinguished for eternity. All knowledge. All hope. All joy. All thought. All consciousness. Gone. Forever. There is nothing peaceful or serene or restful about this. It is the loneliest concept I can comprehend. Eternal, solitary nothingness. We’re not talking about 20,000, or 20,000,0000 or 20,000,000,000 years here. We’re talking about eternity. I am terrified of this. Utterly terrified. I find the atheist line to be a rationalization.
Another popular atheist talking point is that, since the void of death is final and non-negotiable, we ought to simply live our lives to the fullest, enjoy every day, carpe diem, etc. On the surface this is an attractive philosophy and makes sense (sort of like religious faith, I guess). But I don’t buy it. To me, the idea of living a happy and fulfilled life simply makes the prospect of death – losing all of that happiness and fulfillment and surrendering to solitary non-existence for eternity – that much worse. Better, it seems, to live a depressed, sorrowful life; then, at least, death may not seem so bad. I can't be happy knowing that I face an eternity of nothingness that will never end. It haunts me wherever I go, sapping my life of enjoyment.
But oh, the atheists counter, that’s too narrow and selfish a view: There’s your family, your children, their children, and the world itself to consider: Devote your life to improving the lives of the people around you and you will have served a purpose (and will live on through them and through whatever work you did). Again, I don’t get it. Your kids will grow up and die too, their hopes, dreams, and memories eviscerated forever. And so will their kids. If you contribute something to the culture, maybe it will survive a few generations, perhaps even a few hundred years – more, if your contribution is particularly noteworthy. But that is nothing compared to the timeline of human existence. Your contribution will ultimately be lost and forgotten as well. And so, eventually, will all of humanity. The fate of the universe, it seems, is either to retract in a big crunch or to die out because of too much expansion. There is no point to any of this, or any of us. There is no purpose in improving or contributing to human advancement – or to the happiness of an individual. It is all an illusion. The only thing that is real is the nothingness that preceded our own existences and the nothingness that will follow them.
Dawkins, in one of his videos, takes religion to task for scaring kids with images of hell and eternal damnation. I guess he has a point. But as a kid, I was never worried that much about hell. It was Dawkins’ own vision of eternal nothingness that sent me, screaming and running, into my parents’ room late at night.
Therein lies my problem with atheists. I get and accept that they are correct (although, I imagine, some part of me will always yearn for some other explanation for life for as long as I live). What I don’t get is why they are so damned happy about it.
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