NOTE from Sherry: This post contains descriptions of death that may be upsetting to some readers; be aware of this if you choose to continue reading.
SCIENCE LAGS AGAIN!
[The following is a response to a request.]
Recent reports say scientists now may know why people who are dying experience out-of-this-world events. So?
Haven’t we known the answer to this for about as long written language has been around? To me it seems obvious. I also knew at age 7 how I would feel (in mere seconds) when my bicycle left the macadam on a sharp turn of a country road and I saw the briar bushes ahead. My brain neurons were firing like crazy and in an instant I KNEW what things would be like in the future unless the Lord returned before then, sharp thorns and all. Duh! I wasn’t dumb. Thankfully, no broken bones. No scientist required. Sometimes our brains can work out the future in vivid detail in a mere micro-seconds.
During all the guillotine beheadings in France, hundreds of years ago, two friends made a deal. If one was beheaded, the other would watch to see how long the beheaded one was aware. The blade of the guillotine slid quickly down its tracks. The head of his friend blinked his eyes for about 15 seconds before his eyes closed forever. That may be apocryphal, but the following isn’t…
Cecil Adams “The Straight Dope” reports: “Then I received a note from a U.S. Army veteran who had been stationed in Korea. In June 1989 the taxi he and a friend were riding in collided with a truck. My correspondent was pinned in the wreckage. The friend was decapitated. Here’s what happened:
My friend’s head came to rest face up, and (from my angle) upside-down. As I watched, his mouth opened and closed no less than two times. The facial expressions he displayed were first of shock or confusion, followed by terror or grief. I cannot exaggerate and say that he was looking all around, but he did display ocular movement in that his eyes moved from me, to his body, and back to me. He had direct eye contact with me when his eyes took on a hazy, absent expression … and he was dead.
I’ve spoken with the author and am satisfied the event occurred as described.”
So, brain activity does not cease altogether even if the heart stops beating and lungs cease to heave. Death is sometimes a process and not every system stops at the same instant the heart does. One lady was at death’s door. In the last moment she exclaimed, “Am I supposed to stop breathing now?” There’s no death prep course explaining “how” to die.
I’ve been in many hospital rooms when the lights went out for someone’s loved one. The monitors continued to show activity. The heart monitor would show some phantom random beats. The electro-monitors continued to show activity of some sort in the brain. But the person was gone. The nurse would come in, inform the family and friends that it was over, and they would leave in tears. I usually stayed a second longer to pray for the family and to pronounce a blessing over the deceased (simple, short, and nothing weird). I knew them.
I’ll admit, I have kept a healthy skepticism about things like statues of Mary which cry, supposed burial cloths from Turin, and “I’ve seen heaven” reports. I’m also skeptical of “science” which has too many holes in the theories to be actual science. According to David D. Burns (a psychotherapist) “Making predictions on scant information” is one of thirteen major “Thinking Errors” or “Cognitive Distortions” which should be avoided (yet scientists do this all the time!) I don’t believe there is a wealthy prince from Africa who will share his wealth with me, either. People lie sometimes, often for a twisted reasons. There was the young lady who claimed men from Duke lacrosse team raped her … it was a lie, but it got a lot of people upset at the Duke lacrosse team. Those men had their lives ruined … so she could get attention?
On the other hand some things we know to be true because we know the character of the person who told us. You SHOULD be able to trust a parent, but some of them lie repeatedly. You SHOULD be able to trust your weather forecaster, but ours claims we will get rain 150% of the time. OK, the problems above are because these are also people. People make mistakes or lie (not all of them, or all the time, but we should maintain skepticism. I am always skeptical of weather forecasts). So, any time people are involved I tend toward skepticism. “Trust, but verify.”
Coming in part 2: So, very recently there was a scientific report “what happens in our brain when we die…”
Copyright 2025 Donald Whelpley
[PLEASE NOTE that Don is always open to discussing the thoughts and opinions he shares here and welcomes comments as shared in the comment section. He doesn’t use other social media platforms and won’t see whatever you’d like to share with him if you post it elsewhere.
ALSO, Don is always open to offer his thoughts on various topics. If you have a specific request, you can let him know in a comment; he reads – and replies to – them all. ~ Sherry]
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“…any time people are involved I tend toward skepticism…”
For me that includes scientists, doctors, theologians, and even friends.
People make mistakes. Sometimes on purpose or out of cruelty, sometimes through ignorance or lack of concentration.
“Trust, but verify” helps to keep us safer.
That being said, when enough people say the same things one tends to believe SOMETHING happened, except I still don’t believe in alien abductions or that vaccines cause autism.
I would agree with your second statement though at the top of this I’d put media (including scientific journals) and politicians. Then again, maybe not. No need to be skeptical of those people we already know are untrustworthy; that’s why I verify before I trust, and put more store in anecdotal evidence than in those sources that are paid – one way or another – to “report” something that will benefit themselves or their sponsors. Which is most media and what people claim as “science” today.
Yes.
Appreciate your thoughtful comments. I agree.
Science is supposed to be “provable.” Funny how so much of “science” is not. That makes it at best a philosophy or religion, I guess. As I mentioned, David D. Burns calls that a cognitive distortion when conclusions are based on scant evidence. He says that kind of thinking needs to be challenged (he was NOT speaking about scientists, per se).
(I’ll mention here that one scientist proposed that the known universe is INSIDE a black hole merely because some galaxies spin counter-clockwise. Ah! OK.)