I agree that your atheist belief is based upon faith and that you exercise your will as if were true. But it is not true. It is a false worldview that you have chosen to place your faith in.
And, as usual, you simply dismissed a serious scientific study that created a firestorm of discussion amongst scientists holding to strict naturalism resulting in a change of position for more than a few of them. But then, as usual, you choose to reject what you do not understand in addition to that which you do understand but which doesn't fit the false view of the world that you've chosen for yourself.
As I stated, Dr. Owen and his colleagues discovered (see the 'Detecting Awareness in the Vegetative State' study published in the September 2006 issue of Science); mental function and brain function don't always correlate. This is because mental function isn’t the same thing as brain function. Mental function is not linked to brain function in a strict cause-and-effect relationship as you mistakenly believe.
And what is the purpose of trolling around creation websites looking for quotes of Owen's to attribute to me as if I ever said them: it's a meaningless ad hominem exercise. I'm not responsible for the misinformation on anyone's website.
I'm sourcing a study in Nature. Why don't you pull that study and see what the results are for yourself instead of trolling around creation websites or skipping it to repeat a
hypothesis that Owen may have made?
As Deem stated:
"Owen and his colleagues did a fascinating series of tests. First, they asked a group of normal volunteers to have a kind of research MRI scan of their brain, called a functional MRI (fMRI). fMRI doesn’t measure the actual activity of the neurons in the brain, but it measures the blood flow and brain metabolism in specific regions of the brain. It has been found to correlate to some extent with mental activity. Thinking about things can make the metabolism in certain parts of the brain increase, and fMRI can detect this. The observation that brain activity can locally increase brain blood flow and metabolism was originally made a century ago, in animals in the lab, so it’s not new. What is new is that we can now measure it in living people non-invasively, using fMRI.
The Cambridge researchers asked the volunteers to think of things, like playing tennis or walking across the room, and they recorded their fMRI brain responses. They also presented the volunteers with nonsense words, to distinguish understanding in the brain from the mere reflex to sounds. The response to understanding was different from the response to sound. The fMRI test seemed to test understanding, not just reflexes.
They did the same tests to the woman who was in a persistent vegetative state. They asked her to imagine playing tennis or imagine walking across the room, and they did the sham test with random words as well.
When they examined her fMRI responses, they found that her fMRI patterns were identical to those of the normal awake volunteers. By fMRI criteria, she understood. In fact, by fMRI criteria, she was as conscious as the normal volunteers. Her brain was massively damaged, to the extent that she had been diagnosed as having no mind at all. Yet the blood flow and metabolism patterns in her brain were those of a normal person. And just like normal people, she showed different fMRI responses to nonsense words. So she not only heard what was said to her, but she understood, and complied with the researchers’ requests to think about specific activities like playing tennis and walking across a room.
Owen’s study generated enormous interest among researchers, physicians and the public, not only for its implications for diagnosis of persistent vegetative state (e.g. the implications for the Terri Schiavo case), but because of what it suggests about deeper questions about the relationship between the mind and the brain. Many other studies of fMRI in patients in persistent vegetative state are underway, and several studies recently completed with other patients tend to support Owen’s findings.
From a scientific standpoint, Owen’s study is important for three reasons. The first is obvious; the last two are more subtle, but very important:
- Owen’s study demonstrates that normal consciousness might be present in some patients who have met the clinical criteria for persistent vegetative state, which is defined as a state lacking consciousness.
- It demonstrates that methods of assessing brain state and function (e.g., MRI, EEG, clinical examination, fMRI) can differ profoundly in their assessment of consciousness.
- It demonstrates that an indirect assessment of brain function (fMRI, which measures regional blood flow and brain metabolism), may reveal evidence for consciousness when more direct methods (clinical examination, EEG) fail to detect consciousness.
Note that each of the three conclusions that can be inferred from Owen’s study is evidence for the lack of correlation between various methods of assessing consciousness based on assessment of material properties of the brain. The inconsistency between the fMRI and the other standard methods of assessment is striking. If the mind is the brain, why would different measures of brain function yield contradictory measures of mind function? If materialism is true, correlation between brain function and mind function should converge, not diverge."
When a person's spirit/soul separates from their mortal body; they are no longer limited by the impairments of their mortal body. Spiritual dimensions certainly exist beyond your myopic denial of them and you're going to enter them upon the death of your mortal body. It's a claim with a body of evidence both scientific and experiential. You simply continue to falsely assert the opposite even when you are handed the evidence. This is an act of will on your part. This is an act of negative volition on your part. You certainly can choose to exercise your will differently.
The truth is that the paranormal element in NDEs has long been recognized; however, few near-death studies have focused on this aspect of the experience. But many of those who've studied the paranormal element in NDEs, including recent studies, are stating the opposite of your assertion.
For example, Dr. Greyson (Chester F. Carlson Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences, and the former director of The Division of Perceptual Studies) argues for an expanded discussion about the mind-brain relationship and the possibilities of human consciousness.
Watching genuine NDEs exhibit all kinds of evidences that transcend strict materialism, including extrasensory perception (ESP) in which the revived person is able to recount specific information they have never been exposed to about the lives of other people they've never met for example, tends to lead honest researchers to that conclusion.
The data is clear that NDEs often produce paranormal experiences to an extent that even the scientific literature uses the terminology "alternative reality" (see 'Increase in Psychic Phenomena Following Near-Death Experiences by Bruce Greyson). That would be the one you work so hard to deny.
Now please provide the studies you assert show "A great deal of research on NDEs has been carried out in the last few years and the findings all point to a non-paranormal origin."
^ Where are they? I'd love to show you where the mark was missed. Please provide your sources and don't just make the assertion.
This is strictly a belief based upon faith. You have a desire for it to be true, but you have no evidence. If memory is not tied to brain function then no one should ever suffer from Alzheimers.
You and I have a different understanding of what the mind represents. I see the mind as simply the sum total of the activity taking place in the brain. You may believe the mind can exist apart from the brain, but there is no evidence this is true. This belief is part of your faith, and that’s fine, but saying things like “Obviously, an Alzheimer's sufferer will retain their full memory upon the death of their mortal body” is a claim that bares no fruit. There is nothing obvious about it. It is not a truth claim, it is a faith based claim.
Your friend’s heart may have stopped pumping temporarily, but his brain was still alive and he was evidently in a dream state. A great deal of research on NDEs has been carried out in the last few years and the findings all point to a non-paranormal origin.
Owen did not make this claim. What he said is as follows: “... recent functional neuroimaging studies have suggested that islands of preserved brain function may exist in a small percentage of patients who have been diagnosed as vegetative.”
“Islands of preserved brain function” – did you catch that. You probably got your interpretation of his work from a Creation Science website, but he certainly never said anything of the sort.