Heaven?

I saw a study not long ago where they gave the active ingredient in psilocybin muchrooms (shrooms) to terminal patients to see if the permanent psychological changes it causes (mind/body dissociation) would help with their anxiety. It did seem to help. The patients were less emotionally invested in their bodies -- better able to deal with the idea that they were failing.

This was held by the scientific types as a possible great advance in the treatment of terminal illness. And I guess it was.

But an interesting related question is: if traditional religious belief was available in capsule form, would you take it? Our modern, rationalistic, secular sensibilities are not offended by giving terminal patients drugs that rip their psyches loose from their bodies; then why is it that a doctor who tells his patients that he has seen angels and felt the benign presence of God makes us squeamish? I'm not asking whether his visions were real or his insights were true (and I doubt both) but am asking the related question: would we be better off if we let him persuade us?

Some people believe that the human spirit lives on after death.  Others see death as the complete termination of human existence.  I don't see any attempt here to argue for or against either philosophy, just a link to a current news story about a neurosurgeon's strange experience. 

If you're inclined to believe in an eternal human soul, the neurosurgeon's eperience may be comforting.  If you don't believe, then it's just a curious, but misleading anecdote, and it's easy to dismiss it entirely as neurons firing randomly or some built-in last-ditch defense mechanism of the human mind.

It's certainly not worth arguing about, and I don't see anyone in this thread using it to support an argument for or against either mindset.

Interesting perhaps, but not really worth getting excited about.

 

I look at it this way, and both outcomes in my opinion are okay with me.

1. You die, your dead, lights out, game over, just like going to sleep, and never never waking up.

or

2. There is SOMETHING, after death, what ever it might be.

......as long as its not this bloke lol

Peter Dis -- interesting way to look at it. I would take that pill! Makes you happier while you're here and there's no downside (unless it got in the way of you doing a bunch of evil stuff you otherwise would have done...but as it turns out, I have no evil plans, just the usual occasional accidental wrongdoing).

But since there is no pill, I'll have to keep living with my doubts.

NotHard: Your insight lines up with Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Arelius*. Always a favorite of mine.

* said...
"He who fears death either fears the loss of sensation or a different kind of sensation. But if thou shalt have no sensation, neither wilt thou feel any harm; and if thou shalt acquire another kind of sensation, thou wilt be a different kind of living being and thou wilt not cease to live."

You might also check out Pascal's Wager en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager in which Blaise Pascal makes a fairly compelling argument that a pragmatic man should believe in God despite the lack of evidence that He exists. Different conclusion but similar logic.

Infohound: As I look at the people I have known whose lives I admire I find that they tend to be religious. That isn't particularly good evidence that their religious beliefs are "true" (whatever that means) but it would sure make the pill tempting if it existed...

A near-death experience is by definition not death, thus IMO this whole thing is hardly worth reporting. It sounds very similar to my experiences of how the mind gets messed about by general anaesthetics, indeed it's hardly more than a dream. And it has nothing to do with PCa.