Have you ever had a near-death experience that changed your life forever, or perhaps even changed the way you look at or perceive things?


This is what happened to neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander. He did not believe in heaven or the possibility of an afterlife until he slipped into a coma one day and experienced what he calls the afterlife.

8 million Americans claim that they have had a near-death experience, and this is just one of them. Here is Dr. Alexander’s story.


One evening while Dr. Alexander was sleeping, he awoke from a deep sleep to severe and excruciating pain. He was unsure of what the problem was, but believed that he was having a muscle spasm. Dr. Alexander told his wife not to call 911. Those were the last words he said to her before slipping into a coma.

When Dr. Alexander arrived at the hospital, doctors determined that he had not suffered from a muscle spasm as Dr. Alexander had originally predicted. Dr. Alexander’s odd ailment was actually bacterial meningitis which had traveled to his brain, infecting it and leaving him in a deep coma. Doctors told his wife that he may never wake up. His brain showed no signs of activity, and hopes of him surviving were slim.









What his wife and doctors did not know, though, is that during the length of time that Dr. Alexander was in the coma, he was experiencing a life-altering epiphany which would change his way of thinking forever. Dr. Alexander says that while he was in a coma, he was in a dark place which had no perception of memory or time. “But then, I was rescued from that by this spinning melody of light, that came closer and opened up, and was a rip in the fabric of reality that just opened up around me,” he said about the experience. “The colors were extremely vivid, with millions of butterflies, and these flowers blooming, blossoms opening as we flew by.”

Dr. Alexander also said that he was guided by the presence of a beautiful girl. “She never said a word to me. She would look at me and the thoughts would come directly into my mind, into my awareness. The thoughts were, ‘You are loved, you are cherished, there is nothing you can do wrong". He also said that during his time in the coma, he was told he would be “going back” soon.


On the seventh day that Dr. Alexander was in the coma, he woke up. Dr. Alexander explains that the girl who guided him in his coma was a beautiful girl with high cheekbones and stunning blue eyes. He explains that she never spoke a word to him, but her thoughts went to his mind. She told him that he was loved and cherished.

Dr. Alexander searched for answers to find out who the blue-eyed girl was who had guided him through his journey. He was told that many people who shared similar experiences were often guided by loved ones. Dr. Alexander questioned who his guide was for some time, and four months after he awoke from his coma he found out who the mysterious girl was.

Dr. Alexander had been adopted when he was a child. Later in life he met his birth parents, but never got the chance to meet his birth sister, who had died when she was 36 years old.



Four months after waking from his coma, Dr. Alexander received a picture of his deceased birth sister. She was a blue-eyed, beautiful woman. Dr. Alexander explained that the moment was extremely powerful, and that now he knows that his guiding light was the sister he had never met.



Dr. Alexander hopes to share his story with the rest of the world. He hopes that his story will help make the world a better place and provide hope for people who are struggling or have lost God.



Early life, family, and education

Alexander is the adopted descendant of a family of scholars, jurists, and physicians, including Eben Alexander Jr. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy (class of 1972), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Duke University School of Medicine (M.D., 1981).

Alexander was an Intern in General Surgery at Duke University Medical Center, a resident at Duke, Newcastle (U.K.) General Hospital. He was a resident and research fellow at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital and is certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery and the American College of Surgeons (F.A.C.S.).

Career

Alexander has taught at Duke University Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, University of Massachusetts Medical School, and the University of Virginia Medical School.

He has had hospital appointments at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, University of Massachusetts Medical Center, and Lynchburg (Virginia) General Hospital-CentraHealth.

Professional activities

Alexander is a member of the American Medical Association .

source: http://www.providr.com/atheist-doctors-last-words-to-his-wife/

Thank God

Atheist Sam Harris offers half-witted attack of Eben Alexander’s Near-Death Experience

The following is from an exchange between Dr. Sam Harris and Dr. Eben Alexander regarding Sam Harris’ blog post.

Sam Harris: …There’s nothing to debate either. He can’t reasonably claim that the relevant parts of his brain (not just the cortex) were “completely shut down.” It’s just not a factual statement.

Eben Alexander: Of course, it was premature for him to speak out based on the Newsweek article — he needs to at least read the book if he wants to avoid making embarrassing statements that he later regrets. Isolated preservation of cortical regions might have explained some elements of my experience, but certainly not the overall odyssey of rich experiential tapestry.

The severity of my meningitis and its refractoriness to therapy for a week should have eliminated all but the most rudimentary of conscious experiences: peripheral white blood cell [WBC] count over 27,000 per mm3, 31 percent bands with toxic granulations, CSF WBC count over 4,300 per mm3, CSF glucose down to 1.0 mg/dl (normally 60-80, may drop down to ~ 20 in severe meningitis), CSF protein 1,340 mg/dl, diffuse meningeal involvement and widespread blurring of the gray-white junction, diffuse edema, with associated brain abnormalities revealed on my enhanced CT scan, and neurological exams showing severe alterations in cortical function (from posturing to no response to noxious stimuli, florid papilledema, and dysfunction of extraocular motility [no doll’s eyes, pupils fixed], indicative of brainstem damage).

Going from symptom onset to coma within 3 hours is a very dire prognostic sign, conferring 90% mortality at the very beginning, which only worsened over the week. No physician who knows anything about meningitis will just “blow off” the fact that I was deathly ill in every sense of the word, and that my neocortex was absolutely hammered. Anyone who simply concludes that “since I did so well I could not have been that sick” is begging the question, and knows nothing whatsoever about severe bacterial meningitis.

I invite the skeptical doctors to show me a case remotely similar to mine. My physicians, and their consultants at UVA, Bowman Gray-Wake Forest, Duke, Harvard, Stanford and beyond were astonished that I recovered.

In an effort to explain the “ultra-reality” of the experience, I examined this hypothesis: Was it possible that networks of inhibitory neurons might have been predominantly affected, allowing for unusually high levels of activity among the excitatory neuronal networks to generate the apparent “ultra-reality” of my experience? One would expect meningitis to preferentially disturb the superficial cortex, possibly leaving deeper layers partially functional. The computing unit of the neocortex is the six-layered “functional column,” each with a lateral diameter of 0.2–0.3 mm.

There is significant interwiring laterally to immediately adjacent columns in response to modulatory control signals that originate largely from subcortical regions (the thalamus, basal ganglia, and brainstem). Each functional column has a component at the surface (layers 1–3), so that meningitis effectively disrupts the function of each column just by damaging the surface layers of the cortex. The anatomical distribution of inhibitory and excitatory cells, which have a fairly balanced distribution within the six layers, does not support this hypothesis. Diffuse meningitis over the brain’s surface effectively disables the entire neocortex due to this columnar architecture. Full-thickness destruction is unnecessary for total functional disruption.

Given the prolonged course of my poor neurological function (seven days) and the severity of my infection, it is unlikely that even deeper layers of the cortex were still functioning in more than isolated pockets of small networks.
The thalamus, basal ganglia, and brainstem are deeper brain structures (“subcortical regions”) that some colleagues postulated might have contributed to the processing of such hyperreal experiences. In fact, all agreed that none of those structures could play any such role without having at least some regions of the neocortex still functional. All agreed in the end that such subcortical structures alone could not have handled the intense neural calculations required for such a richly interactive experiential tapestry.
There are 9 hypotheses discussed in an appendix of my book that I derived based on conversations with colleagues. None of them explained the hyper-reality in any brain-based fashion.

Sam Harris: And even if I granted that his brain had been shut down — it’s not shut down now. And there is absolutely no way for him to establish (or even to subjectively know) that he didn’t have his experience as his brain was coming back online. End of debate, as far as I’m concerned.

Eben Alexander: Again, he needs to read the book. In fact, I know that my experience happened within coma because of certain anchors to earth time in memory. Of course the whole issue of how I remembered so much haunted me from the beginning — before my coma, I would have stated flatly that someone that sick would remember absolutely nothing. And I would have been totally wrong. Memory extends beyond physical brain and physical universe (again, clues from transpersonal psychology, which I knew nothing of before). And time flow in that realm is very different. I would advise the skeptics to contribute to a much broader understanding, instead of just trying to deny, if they’re up to the challenge.

To any skeptic who thinks he has explained my experience as brain-based, he then needs to address the non-local nature of consciousness ~ the broad clinical experience in transpersonal psychology (notably all of the past life clinical work, the reincarnation work from Ian Stevenson and Jim Tucker at UVA; also very relevant in terms of how I remembered so much) and address the overwhelming tsunami of evidence of the phenomena of non-local consciousness in Irreducible Mind

Source: http://skeptiko.com/sam-harris-wont-debate-eben-alexander-on-near-death-experience-science/

.

God will show mercy to who He will. Many atheists die without receiving that mercy, but Alexander was touched by grace.

This touched me

Ishilove:
God will show mercy to who He will. Many atheists die without receiving that mercy, but Alexander was touched by grace.

This touched me

God has always been loving and merciful but unfortunately all an atheist sees especially those here on Nairaland is what they choose to tell themselves about God and it's always never anything good about God. Yet here is one who was once an atheist and an authority when it comes to medical science and neurosurgery yet God used his very field to show him how little he knew about life after here.

I particularly loved his schooling of Sam Harris and how detailed he offered his response.

Let the "more knowledgeable " atheists here try and debunk that.

butterflylion:


God has always been loving and merciful but unfortunately all an atheist sees especially those here on Nairaland is what they choose to tell themselves about God and it's always never anything good about God. Yet here is one who was once an atheist and an authority when it comes to medical science and neurosurgery yet God used his very field to show him how little he knew about life after here.

I particularly loved his schooling of Sam Harris and how detailed he offered his response.

Let the "more knowledgeable " atheists here try and debunk that.

Alex could have died with that knowledge of an afterlife, but he was given a second chance to come back and testify. That mercy is what I'm referring to.

I don't know why you bother yourself with fruitless arguments. You get time sha. Let atheists come and 'debunk' all they want but the truth remains, immutable. What I'd rather do is hope God shows them mercy.

Ishilove:

Alex could have died with that knowledge of an afterlife, but he was given a second chance to come back and testify. That's the mercy is what I'm referring to.

I don't know why you bother yourself with fruitless arguments. You get time sha. Let atheists come and 'debunk' all they want but the truth remains, immutable. What I'd rather do is hope God shows them mercy.

I am not open to an argument either which was why I deliberately posted his own exchange with Sam Harris one of their atheist champions. All the arguments they may wish to raise here on Nairaland has been done in advance in that exchange.

I am so glad he did not pass on from his coma but God allowed him to return and correct his numerous errors by declaring against what he declared for before then.

Great Testimony.

The type of testimony that gives atheists and critics diarrhoea and headache .....

felixomor:
Great Testimony.

The type of testimony that gives atheists and critics diarrhoea and headache .....

Watch them avoid this thread like a plague. When real issues that would cause their atheistic consciences to be pricked are placed before them, they all hide away like vampires from sunlight!

Hopefullandlord and his squad will still have points to give against this... ... THEY WILL COME AND ASK U FOR EVIDENCE OF THE COMA! Show them the coma! Hahahahhaha they want a picture of d gal guiding d man

butterflylion:


Watch them avoid this thread like a plague. When real issues that would cause their atheistic consciences to be pricked are placed before them, they all hide away like vampires from sunlight!

Exactly

Smallville10:
Hopefullandlord and his squad will still have points to give against this... ... THEY WILL COME AND ASK U FOR EVIDENCE OF THE COMA! Show them the coma! Hahahahhaha they want a picture of d gal guiding d man

Lmao

When you post stories like this I wonder what you want us to say? ,"wow a neurosurgeon thinks god exists, it must be true! "? Even if Dawkins or whoever else you guys think are the champions of atheism renounce atheism today it still does nothing to logically satisfy me that an intervening creator exists.

LightandDarkness:
When you post stories like this I wonder what you want us to say? ,"wow a neurosurgeon thinks god exists, it must be true! "? Even if Dawkins or whoever else you guys think are the champions of atheism renounce atheism today it still does nothing to logically satisfy me that an intervening creator exists.

Is that all?

I think there are just too many stories of events /experiences of the afterlife dating back centuries for anyone to just disregard them with a whiff of the hand.

Even governments of advanced nations invest in some forms of paranormal research which gives some backing to issues such as this and the existence of a spiritual realm.

butterflylion:


Is that all?

Like my own status?, how?

Anyway It is clear why Harris would not debate him, what he's arguing is pseudoscience and not science and he pretty much acknowledges it himself. How?, lets see

"The severity of my meningitis and its refractoriness to therapy for a week should have eliminated all but the most rudimentary of conscious experiences"

Okay so he acknowledges the "severity" of his meningitis should have eliminated any conscious experiences. Why?

"with associated brain abnormalities revealed on my enhanced CT scan, and neurological exams showing severe alterations in cortical function" "No physician who knows anything about meningitis will just “blow off” the fact that I was deathly ill in every sense of the word, and that my neocortex was absolutely hammered"

So he pretty much let's us know that the only way he could have had any conscious experience and remembered it is if his neocortex was functioning and higher brain functions were still intact, kindly read this and the clinical significance aspect underneath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocortex#Function and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroanatomy_of_memory#Damage_to_the_cortex. This is something Sam Harris points out, it is an obvious question.

"There’s nothing to debate either. He can’t reasonably claim that the relevant parts of his brain (not just the cortex) were “completely shut down.” It’s just not a factual statement.".

It is not possible that the part of his brain responsible for memory and conscious thought was "completely shut down" or hammered" and yet he managed to have and remember the experience, it is similar to claiming you can see when someone has plucked out your eyes. If you read the clinical significance section of the link I posted above you will see that diseases that cause damage to the neocortex result in short and long term memory loss, if you don't trust wikipedia and have access to research articles you can do more reading here http://www.sciencedirect.com/search?qs=cortex+damage+memory&authors=&pub=&volume=&issue=&page=&origin=home&zone=qSearch can't find a good free article.

Okay so ignoring all the noise he again informs us that there was no way he could have had these experience if some part of his neocortex was not functional.

"Given the prolonged course of my poor neurological function (seven days) and the severity of my infection, it is unlikely that even deeper layers of the cortex were still functioning in more than isolated pockets of small networks.
The thalamus, basal ganglia, and brainstem are deeper brain structures (“subcortical regions”) that some colleagues postulated might have contributed to the processing of such hyperreal experiences. In fact, all agreed that none of those structures could play any such role without having at least some regions of the neocortex still functional. All agreed in the end that such subcortical structures alone could not have handled the intense neural calculations required for such a richly interactive experiential tapestry.

So both Sam Harris and Dr Alexander acknowledge these experiences cannot or should not occur with an inactive neocortex. So how then was he able to have this experience and remember it if his neocortex was completely shutdown? The rational conclusion is this there must have been neocortical brain activity at the time he experience his NDE which is how he was able to have it and remember it. Sam Harris says as much as well "Sam Harris: And even if I granted that his brain had been shut down — it’s not shut down now. And there is absolutely no way for him to establish (or even to subjectively know) that he didn’t have his experience as his brain was coming back online. End of debate, as far as I’m concerned."

Dr Alexander also sees this problem " In fact, I know that my experience happened within coma because of certain anchors to earth time in memory. Of course the whole issue of how I remembered so much haunted me from the beginning — before my coma, I would have stated flatly that someone that sick would remember absolutely nothing."

But Dr Alexander instead offers a supernatural and pseudoscientific explanation. "Memory extends beyond physical brain and physical universe (again, clues from transpersonal psychology, which I knew nothing of before). And time flow in that realm is very different. I would advise the skeptics to contribute to a much broader understanding, instead of just trying to deny, if they’re up to the challenge.

To any skeptic who thinks he has explained my experience as brain-based, he then needs to address the non-local nature of consciousness ~ the broad clinical experience in transpersonal psychology"

Essentially Dr Alexander is insisting that his neocortex was truly "inactive" and he was able to have and remember this experience because consciousness is not tied to the physical brain or universe. However there is no proof of this, if you believe in the spiritual and you believe this story is true how come you dont remember heaven, or events from when you were a "spirit", or when your soul had no body, or even being in your mother's womb-surely you should remember that if you had some spiritual brain remembering events. The rational answer is because you actually need higher brain activity to form memories.

So what is the more probable explanation, that Dr Alexander's neocortex was in fact active or we all have memory depots in some spiritual realm which is not tied to our physical brain.

And so far I have been arguing this with the perspective that all these things happened the way Dr Alexander actually claimed it did. There is also the fact that one of the Doctor's that treated Dr Alexander told an investigative journalist that Dr Alexander did not slip into a coma on his own as a result of the meningitis infection, rather his coma was chemically induced and when he was weaned of the anesthetics he was conscious but hallucinating https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/07/02/esquire-unearths-proof-of-heaven-authors-credibility-problems/ https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/07/proof-heaven-author-debunked/313681/

I look forward to your responses.

Near death experience
It will be more understandable if He died, rose back from death and then share his experience
Not near death

Smallville10:
Hopefullandlord and his squad will still have points to give against this... ... THEY WILL COME AND ASK U FOR EVIDENCE OF THE COMA! Show them the coma! Hahahahhaha they want a picture of d gal guiding d man

Lmaaao!

U guys kip saying atheist brothers...i am certain dat d reason for dis thread is to invoke anoda irrelevant argument...no wori we will still hear buhari near death experience...

PEACE....

obinna58:
Near death experience
It will be more understandable if He died, rose back from death and then share his experience
Not near death

Do u even wonder what it is with their God and death? Millions of people living, some doubting if God exists,many worshipping the wrong God. But this so call almighty loving creator father waits for thousands to die then choses one out of thousands facing death and shows him a glimpse of hell and heaven.. What a Wise God indeed.
Even our in-house mumu, Felixomor, will be wiser than this.

LightandDarkness:


Like my own status?, how?

Anyway It is clear why Harris would not debate him, what he's arguing is pseudoscience and not science and he pretty much acknowledges it himself. How?, lets see

"The severity of my meningitis and its refractoriness to therapy for a week should have eliminated all but the most rudimentary of conscious experiences"

Okay so he acknowledges the "severity" of his meningitis should have eliminated any conscious experiences. Why?

"with associated brain abnormalities revealed on my enhanced CT scan, and neurological exams showing severe alterations in cortical function" "No physician who knows anything about meningitis will just “blow off” the fact that I was deathly ill in every sense of the word, and that my neocortex was absolutely hammered"

So he pretty much let's us know that the only way he could have had any conscious experience and remembered it is if his neocortex was functioning and higher brain functions were still intact, kindly read this and the clinical significance aspect underneath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocortex#Function and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroanatomy_of_memory#Damage_to_the_cortex. This is something Sam Harris points out, it is an obvious question.

"There’s nothing to debate either. He can’t reasonably claim that the relevant parts of his brain (not just the cortex) were “completely shut down.” It’s just not a factual statement.".

It is not possible that the part of his brain responsible for memory and conscious thought was "completely shut down" or hammered" and yet he managed to have and remember the experience, it is similar to claiming you can see when someone has plucked out your eyes. If you read the clinical significance section of the link I posted above you will see that diseases that cause damage to the neocortex result in short and long term memory loss, if you don't trust wikipedia and have access to research articles you can do more reading here http://www.sciencedirect.com/search?qs=cortex+damage+memory&authors=&pub=&volume=&issue=&page=&origin=home&zone=qSearch can't find a good free article.

Okay so ignoring all the noise he again informs us that there was no way he could have had these experience if some part of his neocortex was not functional.

"Given the prolonged course of my poor neurological function (seven days) and the severity of my infection, it is unlikely that even deeper layers of the cortex were still functioning in more than isolated pockets of small networks.
The thalamus, basal ganglia, and brainstem are deeper brain structures (“subcortical regions”) that some colleagues postulated might have contributed to the processing of such hyperreal experiences. In fact, all agreed that none of those structures could play any such role without having at least some regions of the neocortex still functional. All agreed in the end that such subcortical structures alone could not have handled the intense neural calculations required for such a richly interactive experiential tapestry.

So both Sam Harris and Dr Alexander acknowledge these experiences cannot or should not occur with an inactive neocortex. So how then was he able to have this experience and remember it if his neocortex was completely shutdown? The rational conclusion is this there must have been neocortical brain activity at the time he experience his NDE which is how he was able to have it and remember it. Sam Harris says as much as well "Sam Harris: And even if I granted that his brain had been shut down — it’s not shut down now. And there is absolutely no way for him to establish (or even to subjectively know) that he didn’t have his experience as his brain was coming back online. End of debate, as far as I’m concerned."

Dr Alexander also sees this problem " In fact, I know that my experience happened within coma because of certain anchors to earth time in memory. Of course the whole issue of how I remembered so much haunted me from the beginning — before my coma, I would have stated flatly that someone that sick would remember absolutely nothing."

But Dr Alexander instead offers a supernatural and pseudoscientific explanation. "Memory extends beyond physical brain and physical universe (again, clues from transpersonal psychology, which I knew nothing of before). And time flow in that realm is very different. I would advise the skeptics to contribute to a much broader understanding, instead of just trying to deny, if they’re up to the challenge.

To any skeptic who thinks he has explained my experience as brain-based, he then needs to address the non-local nature of consciousness ~ the broad clinical experience in transpersonal psychology"

Essentially Dr Alexander is insisting that his neocortex was truly "inactive" and he was able to have and remember this experience because consciousness is not tied to the physical brain or universe. However there is no proof of this, if you believe in the spiritual and you believe this story is true how come you dont remember heaven, or events from when you were a "spirit", or when your soul had no body, or even being in your mother's womb-surely you should remember that if you had some spiritual brain remembering events. The rational answer is because you actually need higher brain activity to form memories.

So what is the more probable explanation, that Dr Alexander's neocortex was in fact active or we all have memory depots in some spiritual realm which is not tied to our physical brain.

And so far I have been arguing this with the perspective that all these things happened the way Dr Alexander actually claimed it did. There is also the fact that one of the Doctor's that treated Dr Alexander told an investigative journalist that Dr Alexander did not slip into a coma on his own as a result of the meningitis infection, rather his coma was chemically induced and when he was weaned of the anesthetics he was conscious but hallucinating https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/07/02/esquire-unearths-proof-of-heaven-authors-credibility-problems/ https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/07/proof-heaven-author-debunked/313681/

I look forward to your responses.

Try to reason for yourself instead of following a blind rebuttal from someone else. I call it blind because it missed out Eben Alexanders declaration of a blue eyed lady who guided him all through and he found out 4 months later via her pictures that this same blue eyed lady was his late sister whom he has never met in his life.

How did someone he had no mental imagery of or never met invaded his consciousness so vividly with projected messages to his mind which he knew and could relate with? Did he fabricate an image in his subconscious that somehow matched the true image of his very own dead sister whom he has never met in his entire life ? Remember he described her clearly as having deep blue eyes, high cheek bones and long golden-brown hair.


Dr. Alexander had become ill quickly with flu-like symptoms, back pain, and a headache. He was promptly transported to the Emergency Room, where he had a CT scan of his head and then a lumbar puncture with spinal fluid suggesting a gram-negative meningitis. He was immediately begun on intravenous antibiotics targeting that and placed on a ventilator machinebecause of his critical condition and coma. ... Despite prompt and aggressive antibiotic treatment for his E. coli meningitis as well as continued care in the medical intensive care unit, he remained in a coma six days and hope for a quick recovery faded.

I sat with [Eben's] wife Holley [on Sunday morning] as the doctor showed us the scans and when he told Holley to call her family. He told her that Eben could not survive and that, even if he did, he would be irreparably damaged; in fact, he would be in a vegetative state, one that would require ongoing care at a nursing home. Such observations reflected the ongoing meningitis-induced coma and the dismal neurological prognosis, not recommendations that would be made for a patient simply in a "drug-induced coma."

You need to read this

http://iands.org/ndes/more-info/ndes-in-the-news/970-esquire-article-on-eben-alexander-distorts-the-facts.html

Like I said I am not here to argue but have dropped my submission. Eben Alexanders experience was real and verified!

The Eben Alexander case made news because it appeared on the cover of news week and generated a lot of buzz, the buzz and the controversy it created had investigators going around interview most of the parties involved and it was in the process he was discovered to have been lying, after the publication by Esquire Magazine challenging most of his claims, he himself went underground with his tale.This is old news. He has been debunked already.

http://www.salon.com/2012/11/26/dr_eben_alexanders_so_called_after_life/

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/03/did-the-famed-neurosurgeon-who-claims-he-saw-god-and-visited-heaven-lie-article-exposes-alleged-inconsistencies/

In one of the book's most dramatic scenes, Dr. Laura Potter prepares Alexander to move from the ER to the ICU. In those final moments, after two straight hours of struggle—thrashing and guttural groans and wails—Eben Alexander grows quiet and shouts out, for everyone present to hear, "God, help me!" The doctors, nurses, his wife Holley and his neighbor Michael Sullivan, an Episcopal rector, rush to his stretcher, but Alexander remains completely unresponsive.

Dramatic, but it could not have happened. Dr. Potter has no recollection of the incident but she does remember that she intubated Alexander more than an hour before his departure from the ER. Could he have shouted anything, let alone something clearly heard? "No," she says.

He made a claim in his book while the doctor present there says he waas lying, it never happened

More.


Dr Eben Alexander is a liar for Jesus. . .he has already been debunked. . .

*Esquire writer accuses famed doctor and author Dr. Eben Alexander of potentially embellishing story and leaving out key details
*Investigation shows alleged disparities in Alexander’s account of the afterlife as told in his book “Proof of Heaven” and by others familiar with the story
*Key personal details about Alexander’s background were withheld from the public, Esquire alleges
*ER doctor who treated the neurosurgeon gives contradictory account of events that unfolded at the hospital during Alexander’s near-death experience

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/03/did-the-famed-neurosurgeon-who-claims-he-saw-god-and-visited-heaven-lie-article-exposes-alleged-inconsistencies/

Dr Eben Alexander was an out of work doctor that was looking for money and saw an opportunity by narrating lies and selling it in a book.


When will christians STOP Lying for Jesus?

butterflylion:


Try to reason for yourself instead of following a blind rebuttal from someone else. I call it blind because it missed out Eben Alexanders declaration of a blue eyed lady who guided him all through and he found out 4 months later via her pictures that this same blue eyed lady was his late sister whom he has never met in his life.

How did someone he had no mental imagery of or never met invaded his consciousness so vividly with projected messages to his mind which he knew and could relate with? Did he fabricate an image in his subconscious that somehow matched the true image of his very own dead sister whom he has never met in his entire life ? Remember he described her clearly as having deep blue eyes, high cheek bones and long golden-brown hair.


Dr. Alexander had become ill quickly with flu-like symptoms, back pain, and a headache. He was promptly transported to the Emergency Room, where he had a CT scan of his head and then a lumbar puncture with spinal fluid suggesting a gram-negative meningitis. He was immediately begun on intravenous antibiotics targeting that and placed on a ventilator machinebecause of his critical condition and coma. ... Despite prompt and aggressive antibiotic treatment for his E. coli meningitis as well as continued care in the medical intensive care unit, he remained in a coma six days and hope for a quick recovery faded.

I sat with [Eben's] wife Holley [on Sunday morning] as the doctor showed us the scans and when he told Holley to call her family. He told her that Eben could not survive and that, even if he did, he would be irreparably damaged; in fact, he would be in a vegetative state, one that would require ongoing care at a nursing home. Such observations reflected the ongoing meningitis-induced coma and the dismal neurological prognosis, not recommendations that would be made for a patient simply in a "drug-induced coma."

You need to read this

http://iands.org/ndes/more-info/ndes-in-the-news/970-esquire-article-on-eben-alexander-distorts-the-facts.html

Like I said I am not here to argue but have dropped my submission. Eben Alexanders experience was real and verified!

Didn't you say "Let the "more knowledgeable " atheists here try and debunk that." So you clearly welcomed debate on your submission. Harris's rebuttal was not blind, and as evidenced by the articles, I clearly made research into it myself so i clearly "reasoned". I think you need to properly digest my post so you can be aware of the improbability of this story?

I did not see the image of this woman, only Dr Alexander did, however "remember he described her clearly as having deep blue eyes, high cheek bones and long golden-brown hair."

1. Describes a good percentage of white women, these are not uncommon features lol

2.Given that the image you posted is blurry I can't even determine if those features actually match his sister's

3. Finally "Dr. Alexander had been adopted when he was a child. Later in life he met his birth parents, but never got the chance to meet his birth sister, who had died when she was 36 years old." So you mean to tell me that after meeting his birth family they either neglected to tell him he had a sister or told him and never showed him pictures till-what a surprise-4 months after his famous NDE...


"I sat with [Eben's] wife Holley [on Sunday morning] as the doctor showed us the scans and when he told Holley to call her family. He told her that Eben could not survive and that, even if he did, he would be irreparably damaged; in fact, he would be in a vegetative state, one that would require ongoing care at a nursing home. Such observations reflected the ongoing meningitis-induced coma and the dismal neurological prognosis, not recommendations that would be made for a patient simply in a "drug-induced coma"."

Why wouldn't this prognosis be made for a patient in a drug-induced coma?, it's not like because he was in a coma the progression of the meningitis infection would stop especially if according to him it was refractory to treatment?, I don't see how that is actually a counter to the drug induced coma story. Furthermore it is not uncommon for patient's with bacterial meningitis to be put in induced comas

http://www.webmd.com/children/vaccines/features/surviving-meningitis-carl-buhers-story "The Mt. Vernon, Wash., 14-year-old had contracted meningococcal disease, also known as bacterial meningitis, a rare but potentially deadly infection that can kill a healthy young person in less than a day. So aggressive was Carl's infection that he had to be airlifted to Children's Hospital in Seattle. En route, he was resuscitated three times. Once hospitalized, doctors put him in a drug-induced coma for four weeks and treated him with 25 different medications to keep his body functioning."


An aggressive bacterial meningitis infection can result in a coma http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/221473-clinical which is a dangerous prognostic sign, however patients can also present with a state of "Confusion, agitated delirium, and stupor" said in the same article, sound familiar?.

However when the meningitis infection does cause a coma survival is still possible.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1147163/It-started-like-flu--hours-later-I-coma-bacteria-engulfed-brain-Olympians-shocking-story-meningitis.html

"I was hooked up immediately to a penicillin drip and that’s the last thing I remember. I have vague memories of needles and syringes, but I then lapsed into a coma." "Apparently, the first question Dad asked them was whether I’d be alive in the morning. And they couldn’t give an answer. He was told my chances of coming out of the coma with no physical or mental damage were virtually zero." "After two days, Sarah began to rally and by the third she started to emerge from the coma." " It was at least six months of rebuilding my strength by exercising and working on my sailing before I felt I was myself again, the person I was before meningitis".

So if he was actually in a coma caused by the infection and not in a medically induced one it is not like he couldn't survive. It would be a rare survival but still certainly possible.

butterflylion:
Atheist Sam Harris offers half-witted attack of Eben Alexander’s Near-Death Experience

The following is from an exchange between Dr. Sam Harris and Dr. Eben Alexander regarding Sam Harris’ blog post.

Sam Harris: …There’s nothing to debate either. He can’t reasonably claim that the relevant parts of his brain (not just the cortex) were “completely shut down.” It’s just not a factual statement.

Eben Alexander: Of course, it was premature for him to speak out based on the Newsweek article — he needs to at least read the book if he wants to avoid making embarrassing statements that he later regrets. Isolated preservation of cortical regions might have explained some elements of my experience, but certainly not the overall odyssey of rich experiential tapestry.

The severity of my meningitis and its refractoriness to therapy for a week should have eliminated all but the most rudimentary of conscious experiences: peripheral white blood cell [WBC] count over 27,000 per mm3, 31 percent bands with toxic granulations, CSF WBC count over 4,300 per mm3, CSF glucose down to 1.0 mg/dl (normally 60-80, may drop down to ~ 20 in severe meningitis), CSF protein 1,340 mg/dl, diffuse meningeal involvement and widespread blurring of the gray-white junction, diffuse edema, with associated brain abnormalities revealed on my enhanced CT scan, and neurological exams showing severe alterations in cortical function (from posturing to no response to noxious stimuli, florid papilledema, and dysfunction of extraocular motility [no doll’s eyes, pupils fixed], indicative of brainstem damage).

Going from symptom onset to coma within 3 hours is a very dire prognostic sign, conferring 90% mortality at the very beginning, which only worsened over the week. No physician who knows anything about meningitis will just “blow off” the fact that I was deathly ill in every sense of the word, and that my neocortex was absolutely hammered. Anyone who simply concludes that “since I did so well I could not have been that sick” is begging the question, and knows nothing whatsoever about severe bacterial meningitis.

I invite the skeptical doctors to show me a case remotely similar to mine. My physicians, and their consultants at UVA, Bowman Gray-Wake Forest, Duke, Harvard, Stanford and beyond were astonished that I recovered.

In an effort to explain the “ultra-reality” of the experience, I examined this hypothesis: Was it possible that networks of inhibitory neurons might have been predominantly affected, allowing for unusually high levels of activity among the excitatory neuronal networks to generate the apparent “ultra-reality” of my experience? One would expect meningitis to preferentially disturb the superficial cortex, possibly leaving deeper layers partially functional. The computing unit of the neocortex is the six-layered “functional column,” each with a lateral diameter of 0.2–0.3 mm.

There is significant interwiring laterally to immediately adjacent columns in response to modulatory control signals that originate largely from subcortical regions (the thalamus, basal ganglia, and brainstem). Each functional column has a component at the surface (layers 1–3), so that meningitis effectively disrupts the function of each column just by damaging the surface layers of the cortex. The anatomical distribution of inhibitory and excitatory cells, which have a fairly balanced distribution within the six layers, does not support this hypothesis. Diffuse meningitis over the brain’s surface effectively disables the entire neocortex due to this columnar architecture. Full-thickness destruction is unnecessary for total functional disruption.

Given the prolonged course of my poor neurological function (seven days) and the severity of my infection, it is unlikely that even deeper layers of the cortex were still functioning in more than isolated pockets of small networks.
The thalamus, basal ganglia, and brainstem are deeper brain structures (“subcortical regions”) that some colleagues postulated might have contributed to the processing of such hyperreal experiences. In fact, all agreed that none of those structures could play any such role without having at least some regions of the neocortex still functional. All agreed in the end that such subcortical structures alone could not have handled the intense neural calculations required for such a richly interactive experiential tapestry.
There are 9 hypotheses discussed in an appendix of my book that I derived based on conversations with colleagues. None of them explained the hyper-reality in any brain-based fashion.

Sam Harris: And even if I granted that his brain had been shut down — it’s not shut down now. And there is absolutely no way for him to establish (or even to subjectively know) that he didn’t have his experience as his brain was coming back online. End of debate, as far as I’m concerned.

Eben Alexander: Again, he needs to read the book. In fact, I know that my experience happened within coma because of certain anchors to earth time in memory. Of course the whole issue of how I remembered so much haunted me from the beginning — before my coma, I would have stated flatly that someone that sick would remember absolutely nothing. And I would have been totally wrong. Memory extends beyond physical brain and physical universe (again, clues from transpersonal psychology, which I knew nothing of before). And time flow in that realm is very different. I would advise the skeptics to contribute to a much broader understanding, instead of just trying to deny, if they’re up to the challenge.

To any skeptic who thinks he has explained my experience as brain-based, he then needs to address the non-local nature of consciousness ~ the broad clinical experience in transpersonal psychology (notably all of the past life clinical work, the reincarnation work from Ian Stevenson and Jim Tucker at UVA; also very relevant in terms of how I remembered so much) and address the overwhelming tsunami of evidence of the phenomena of non-local consciousness in Irreducible Mind

Source: http://skeptiko.com/sam-harris-wont-debate-eben-alexander-on-near-death-experience-science/

Any with counters to refute this experience? I must admit that for all that science have accomplished, the surface is barely scratched. If he weren't a respected neuro-scientist, what is the predictable outcome?

And you still have not answered if it is more likely Dr Alexander did have some neocortex activity or there is some spiritual memory system, because that is basically this man's argument, that memories that are not attached to the brain are possible. So I look forward to you proving this

frank317:


Do u even wonder what it is with their God and death? Millions of people living, some doubting if God exists,many worshipping the wrong God. But this so call almighty loving creator father waits for thousands to die then choses one out of thousands facing death and shows him a glimpse of hell and heaven.. What a Wise God indeed.
Even our in-house mumu, Felixomor, will be wiser than this.

Their kind of God prefer acting stupidly with the mind cos he afraid, appearing to humans may put him under siege

Smallville10:
Hopefullandlord and his squad will still have points to give against this... ... THEY WILL COME AND ASK U FOR EVIDENCE OF THE COMA! Show them the coma! Hahahahhaha they want a picture of d gal guiding d man

.

frank317:


[s]Do u even wonder what it is with their God and death? Millions of people living, some doubting if God exists,many worshipping the wrong God. But this so call almighty loving creator father waits for thousands to die then choses one out of thousands facing death and shows him a glimpse of hell and heaven.. What a Wise God indeed.
Even our in-house mumu, Felixomor, will be wiser than this[/s].

I was thinking you would for once say something meaningful...
That pertains to the topic....

Alas, my hope was dashed.
You spoke rubbish as usual

As usual, 2 Nairaland atheists already derailing the thread with meaningless unrelated talk.

Shameful!

felixomor:
As usual, 2 Nairaland atheists already derailing the thread with meaningless unrelated talk.

Shameful!

I'm still waiting for replies to my rebuttal. It's like no one wants to engage, after typing almost 1000 words you want to waste my effort

LightandDarkness:


I'm still waiting for replies to my rebuttal. It's like no one wants to engage, after typing almost 1000 words you want to waste my effort

Sorry you have presented no rebuttal yet.
And its quite obvious you haven't read the thread...

Do well to read.