This is a beautiful picture. Can you believe I just finished this book? Eben Alexander refutes all this in the later Chapters of this book - he addresses this supposition of hallucination specifically by making the very real point that his neocortex was not functioning, amongst other things.
>________________________________ > From: Yifu <[email protected]> >To: [email protected] >Sent: Monday, March 25, 2013 7:04 PM >Subject: [FairfieldLife] Michael Shermer rebuts Eben Alexander > > > >"Allegory of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ" by Pat Devonas: >http://www.museumsyndicate.com/images/2/10741.jpg > >Dr. Michael Shermer attempts to rebut Dr. Eben Alexander's NDE as being >genuinely "out of body" and supernatural. (Alexander is a neurosurgeon who had >an NDE. Claims he traveled out of the body into supernatural dimensions in >which he met deceased relatives, and listened to the OM.) >... >Shermer in Scientific American, Apr 2013, 86, essentially uses a "similarity" >argument coupled with Occam's Razor. Shermer states: "Migraine headaches also >produce halluncinations, which Sacks [neurologist Oliver Sacks] himself has >experienced as a longtime sufferer, including a 'shimmering light' that was >'dazzlingly bring'" etc, etc, clouds, blah, blah. >Then Shermer goes on to make the comparison: "Compare Sack's experience with >that of Alexander's trip to heaven, where he was "in a place of clouds. Big, >puffy, pink-white ones that showed up sharply against the deep blue-black sky. > Higher than the clouds - immeasurably higher - flocks of transparent, >shimmering beings arced across the sky, leaving long, streamerlike lines >behind them.". >... >Then Shermer says "In any case, there is a reason they are called 'near'-death >experiences: the people who have then are not actually dead". Also he inquires >how Alexander could have a memory of the experiences. >. >Finally, Dr. Shermer states "To me, this evidence is proof of hallucination, >not heaven." >. >[his arguments on the whole are similar to those of Sam Harris]. > > > > >
