First recording of a dying human brain shows waves similar to memory flashbacks (2022)

I upvoted you even though we presently disagree because you bring an honest perspective to the discussion.

The main reason I was drawn to the Catholic Church was that I believed in transubstantiation, or at least the real presence. I was drawn to the history of the Church and through prayer and conversations as well as a supernatural event as well as a dream I prayed for, I finally came to accept that praying with saints was not worshiping them. All prayers with saints go directly to God, but sometimes having someone intercede for you, as Mary did at the wedding feast at Cana, helps you with God.

If you have an open mind to switching churches, I recommend the following:

1. Pray to God to guide you to the right Church. I believe that he may be guiding some people to the Catholic Church, others to the Orthodox Church, and some to Protestant churches. Or He may have a real preference. I'm not sure, but I tried pretty hard to figure out where to go and I ended up in the Catholic Church.

2. Take the core issues that are show stoppers for you and research (and pray) them from the other perspective. Like I did with prayer with saints.

3. If you are feeling to be led to a certain church, get the full catechism of that church and read through it. I was shocked at how little I disagreed with the Catholic Church's catechism. It gave me confidence that I was truly being led to Catholicism.

4. Talk to Christians that you look up to. This is what I did with prayer with saints. There was a Christian uncle of mine (not blood, married in) that I was just completely sure that he was a real Christian and he was a Catholic. He explained it to me in ways that made sense and he answered any of my questions. I ended up adopting his middle name Jacques. Which leads to the funny sounding name Zach Jacques Aysan.

I've prayed for you. God Bless!

Thank you for your thoughtful reply, and I shall pray for you in turn. I'm used to people turning towards the Catholic church as they become more legalistic and hard of heart, so your answer caught me by surprise. I also believe in a God that may have a different answer for each one of us, and so I feel that the answer for me at this time might be something like a small men's Bible study group. Christ be with you always.

> I'm very happy to this day I've asked for that screwdriver and I fixed that seatbelt.

That was a great move!

I guess in a thread on an article which mixes a little bit of mysticism into medicine, a little science philosophy fits. I take the plain reading of quantum field equations at face value. I.e. that superposition is real in the normal sense, and that quantum "collapse" is a perceived effect, not actually the superposition reducing to one history, but just the effect of a history becoming entangled with enough particles to be robustly statistically separated from other histories.

(I have never understood why even some scientists can't take the equations at face value, when they already explain why large things don't act like individual particles, despite following the same rules. Without any "observer" voodoo. It as if those scientists agreed the equations say the Earth orbits the sun, and that calculating that way is the right way. But still propose there is some as yet gap in our understanding, that we need to resolve to make that consistent with our perception that the Sun goes around us - despite no actual gap that needs explaining.)

So given that interpretation, we are likely to always (to a high statistical degree) survive scary situations. We may not make it through a high percentage of histories, a high percentage of others' histories may experience us dying, but we of course, are only aware of the histories in which we make it. This also creates an explanation for why we, as a particularly constructed human, exist. We are simply aware of the history in which we are. Not any of the overwhelming number of histories of our universe in which we are not.

Among all the histories of the universe, given that they include every possible (consistent) history, and given that we are just normal chemistry despite our complex construction of statistically unlikely survivals, some have to include us.

That explains (1) our lucky survivals (of ourselves, others certainly experience us dying), (2) our initial personal existence, and (3) the existence of life on Earth. And if there are superpositioned variants of universe laws in a similar fashion (we don't know that yet, but it is a credible idea), (4) why there are histories of universes with laws consistent with us. If it's possible in terms of physical or the ultimate laws, and all consistent possibilities exist, then it is a certainty that there is a version of reality which includes us. And that is of course, where we find ourselves.

Put in your reading list The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar by Edgar Allen Poe

“I say to you that I am dead!”

- https://www.online-literature.com/poe/30/

An interesting question that arises naturally but is entirely unaddressed in the article is “why (and how) would evolution select for this kind of final behaviour?” Given that by definition the process of death occurs well after the phase of out-reproducing others, how would evolution even have an opportunity to select for this “closing of the curtains” moment. It would have to be the byproduct of something that enhances reproductive fitness during the fertile period or extends that period of fertility. Maybe those who have less traumatic near-death-experiences go on to have children (or more children) than those who faced a nihilistic experience? That really seems to be utterly marginal and likely to be swamped by genetic drift. Also remember that arguably it’s the genes that are using us to procreate, not the other way around (selfish gene hypothesis). I really don’t understand how this could arise, and insofar as I don’t understand how it could arise, I’m fairly skeptical that it’s actually occurring (slightly skewed take on scientific empiricism I know, but I’m a Bayesian at heart).