Neurosurgeons, however, are rarely well-trained in brain function
Once upon a time, a neurosurgeon named Eben Alexander contracted a bad case of bacterial meningitis and fell into a coma. While immobile in his hospital bed, he experienced visions of such intense beauty that they changed everything. […] Our current understanding of the mind “now lies broken at our feet”—for, as the doctor writes, “What happened to me destroyed it, and I intend to spend the rest of my life investigating the true nature of consciousness.” […]
Well, I intend to spend the rest of the morning sparing him the effort. […]
Everything—absolutely everything—in Alexander’s account rests on repeated assertions that his visions of heaven occurred while his cerebral cortex was “shut down,” “inactivated,” “completely shut down,” “totally offline,” and “stunned to complete inactivity.” The evidence he provides for this claim is not only inadequate—it suggests that he doesn’t know anything about the relevant brain science.
related { Have you ever noticed that more people come back from Heaven than from Hell? }
photo { Henry Peach Robinson, Fading Away, 1858 | more: Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art }
