The Globe and Mail reports that
You know those old stories about people witnessing a bright light or catching a glimpse of the afterlife when having a near-death experience? It turns out they were probably just hallucinations created by their dying brains.
According to a new study from the University of Michigan, the traditional reactions reported by people near death may simply be illusions caused by a rush of electrical activity in the dying brain.
Let’s see now:
You know those old stories about people changing their minds about an issue? Seeing the light, as it were? It may be no more than electrical activity in the brain.
All mental activity of whatever sort will generate electrical activity in the brain. The question of meaning is not addressed by the presence of electrical activity.
To say that the dying mind generates electrical impulses is fatuous, because the living mind generate electrical impulses too. By this standard, no significance can be attributed to this study whatever.
Is the brain, metaphorically, the generator of mind, or the receiver of mind? The materialist explanation – and by materialist I mean the belief that the only thing in the universe is matter and its motions -is that the mind is generated out of the meat, and when the meat dies, so does the mind. This is a belief. This is a hypothesis. This is a notion. It is not a fact. We have in fact no idea how or whether the meat generates the mind, none whatever.
You have to watch for the relentless assault on belief in the immortal soul conducted in the guise of science. Demonstrating electrical activity in the dying brain is science. Inferring what the electrical means is a matter for philosophy and religion.
Do not confuse materialist doctrine for actual science. Late19th-century philosophical materialism is a doctrine, not to be confused with science. Science may show that the mind is not contained within the brain; science may how that “matter” is not what materialists conceive it to be -in fact, quantum physics has already shown this to be true ; science may show that materialism is incomplete or even false. Do not worry about it. Materialism is a belief, not a fact. It is propagated ceaselessly as a truth. Witness today’s article.