Bonus Podcast: Is Death Final?

Open to Debate

Education, News, Society & Culture

4.6 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 29 October 2015

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If consciousness is just the workings of neurons and synapses, how do we explain the phenomenon of near-death experience? By some accounts, about 3% of the U.S. population has had one: an out-of-body experience often characterized by remarkable visions and feelings of peace and joy, all while the physical body is close to death. To skeptics, there are more plausible, natural explanations, like oxygen deprivation. Is the prospect of an existence after death “real” and provable by science, or a construct of wishful thinking about our own mortality? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Time for Diet Coke?
0:06.0	Yes, yes, yes!
0:12.0	Da da da da da!
0:14.0	I really needed that.
0:16.0	Love what you love.
0:18.0	Diet Coke.
0:19.0	Get runaway ready.
0:21.0	A chance to win the ultimate shopping experience
0:23.0	plus hundreds of prizes curated by Kate Moss.
0:26.0	From a Paxen store, 18 plus T's and C's visit Coke.co.uk slash break.
0:36.0	Hi, I'm John Donovan, Host and moderator of Intelligent Squared US Debates
0:40.0	and it is Halloween.
0:42.0	The playful children's holiday of ghoulish costumes and sacks and sacks and sacks of candy.
0:47.0	But Halloween's ancient origins actually reveal a much deeper and much more meaningful annual ritual.
0:54.0	It marked a transition, actually two kinds.
0:57.0	First, it was the changing of the seasons from summer's harvest to winter's darkness.
1:03.0	It was also the time of year when it was believed that ancestral spirits traveled to other realms.
1:09.0	These transformative analogies underscore the reflection that is inherent in the holiday's true nature as a meditation on death.
1:18.0	But is death final?
1:20.0	Well, back in May of 2014, we challenged four debaters to discuss their ideas about the finality of death.
1:27.0	The motion being debated that night was, death is not final.
1:32.0	Arguing for that motion, Dr. Eben Alexander, he's a neurosurgeon and author of Proof of Heaven,
	...

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