near-death experiences - Are they evidence of an afterlife??

[amortalman]

Debate Question: Do you believe that near-death experiences are evidence of immaterial "souls" surviving death?

Near-death experiences came to the forefront with the publication of Life After Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon by Dr. Raymond A. Moody Jr. in 1975. Since then, hundreds of books have been written on the subject, and thousands of testimonies have been researched and published. I was particularly impressed with the book Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife by Dr. Eben Alexander.

I would like to hear the views of Christians, atheists, and anyone who has read enough about NDEs (or has had one) to have an informed opinion. Thank you.

[amortalman]

[Replying to William in post #38]

Obviously, my debate question was not a legitimate debate question as it did not go far enough to elicit responses beyond a "yes" or "no". With the exception of only two, all the replies I received knew exactly what I meant and I thank them for the grace in overlooking my blunder.

[William]

[Replying to William in post #38]

Obviously, my debate question was not a legitimate debate question as it did not go far enough to elicit responses beyond a "yes" or "no". With the exception of only two, all the replies I received knew exactly what I meant and I thank them for the grace in overlooking my blunder.

What blunder?

[amortalman]

Debate Question: Do you believe that near-death experiences are evidence of immaterial "souls" surviving death?

I think the use of the word 'soul' reduces the answers to that of a religious nature, which often just muddies the waters.

Near-death experiences - et al - are possibly evidence of alternate experiential realities which may be examples of what can be expected if immaterial individual consciousnesses and accompanying developed personalities survive death of the body-container/avatar.

I agree that I did muddy the waters a bit (a failure on my part to think it through). Instead of "souls" surviving death, it would have been more accurate to say "consciousness" surviving death which I alluded to in later remarks. Thanks for pointing that out. I agree with your second statement that NDEs are possible evidence of consciousness surviving physical death. In the interest of science, the research continues as it should.

[AgnosticBoy]

As far as veridical NDE research goes, two areas have dominated.
Indeed, Dr Sam Parnia's extensive Aware study did not come up with any objective evidence for verifying NDEs/OBEs at all. The only evidence that accrued was negative. Even, on the anecdotal front, out of 2060 cardiac arrests, only 140 people could be interviewed(the others didn't survive), and after interviewing 101 of these, 9 patients were identified as having an NDE, and out of these only one had an NDE experience that could be verified for accuracy, and even this is suspect because of the looseness of the protocols, which Parnia, himself, accepted.

This tells me that 1 out of 9 patients had their NDE accounts verified, and I presume that's the case because part of the patient's NDE involved their real world environment (in the hospital room) and not some spiritual place (like Heaven or Hell).

Do you dismiss the one case that was verified or is it your interpretation that it is suspect? I find no reason to dismiss or even question that one verifiable case unless Dr. Sam Parnia said that it was suspect.

I have looked up some NDE studies that involved placing perceptual targets above the patient's bed. I've read that no patients have reported seeing the target while out-of-body. Then again, it may be that a small percentage even report an OBE in the cases where researchers placed a perceptual target. Also, there are some anecdotal reports of OBErs not knowing how to move or navigate while out of body. They're just floating around passively. That might be another factor to consider.

[TRANSPONDER]

That's an odd one. NDE studies involving placing perceptual objects above the bed. (actually that sounds like OOB rather than NDE which is not hovering above the body in the room, but seeing some remote scene). To do that it would require placing a perceptual object out of sight in anticipation of an OOB event occurring. How would they know?

Are we sure that 'studies' does not mean 'anecdotal claim'? Especially as a 'study' of an NDE sounds more like an OOB event. Perhaps a link to one or two of these Studies.

[Aetixintro]

[Replying to blackstart in post #37]

If you’re uncertain, you can just ask the omniscient AI computers what the truth is! Funny, isn’t it? We have omniscient AI computers, but no way in the World are we to able to make the souls visible to the human eye! Not since 1984 either? Sure?

[blackstart]

As far as veridical NDE research goes, two areas have dominated.
Indeed, Dr Sam Parnia's extensive Aware study did not come up with any objective evidence for verifying NDEs/OBEs at all. The only evidence that accrued was negative. Even, on the anecdotal front, out of 2060 cardiac arrests, only 140 people could be interviewed(the others didn't survive), and after interviewing 101 of these, 9 patients were identified as having an NDE, and out of these only one had an NDE experience that could be verified for accuracy, and even this is suspect because of the looseness of the protocols, which Parnia, himself, accepted.

This tells me that 1 out of 9 patients had their NDE accounts verified, and I presume that's the case because part of the patient's NDE involved their real world environment (in the hospital room) and not some spiritual place (like Heaven or Hell).

Do you dismiss the one case that was verified or is it your interpretation that it is suspect? I find no reason to dismiss or even question that one verifiable case unless Dr. Sam Parnia said that it was suspect.

I have looked up some NDE studies that involved placing perceptual targets above the patient's bed. I've read that no patients have reported seeing the target while out-of-body. Then again, it may be that a small percentage even report an OBE in the cases where researchers placed a perceptual target. Also, there are some anecdotal reports of OBErs not knowing how to move or navigate while out of body. They're just floating around passively. That might be another factor to consider.

Actually I said that that this one case was the only case in which could be verified for accuracy, and went on to say that 'even this is suspect because of the looseness of the protocols, which Parnia, himself, accepted.'

So, let me explain:

Only 1 case out of 140 interviewed reported memories of events that Parnia described as verified. Some were actually given 2 interviews and this one case was given 3 interviews. Some of those interviews were given during hospitalization but more often after they were discharged, According to the Aware study report, the reasons for this were as follows:

Furthermore owing to the acuity and severity of the critical illness associated with CA, the time to interview for patients was invariably not exactly the same for every patient, which may have introduced biases (such as recall bias and confabulation) in the recollections.

So, there you have it. Parnia's report accepts that the protocols for interviewing were fairly, if understandably, loose(invariably not exactly the same for every patient) and it(the report) also accepts that it was entirely possible that biases of recall and confabulation might have been introduced bcause of this variance.

Parnia says, when summing up:

Thus, while it was not possible to absolutely prove the reality or meaning of patients’ experiences and claims of awareness, (due to the very low incidence (2 per cent) of explicit recall of visual awareness or so called OBE’s), it was impossible to disclaim them either and more work is needed in this area. Clearly, the recalled experience surrounding death now merits further genuine investigation without prejudice.

which I have no problem with whatever. As I said in my original post, 'All we have are anecdotal accounts. Yes, NDEs undoubtedly happen, but When it comes to validation for evidence of an afterlife, there is nothing of any substance.' I await such validation with interest.

[amortalman]

[Replying to William in post #38]

Obviously, my debate question was not a legitimate debate question as it did not go far enough to elicit responses beyond a "yes" or "no". With the exception of only two, all the replies I received knew exactly what I meant and I thank them for the grace in overlooking my blunder.

What blunder?

The debate question seemed to be a yes or no question. I think it was a blunder (but not a huge one) because I didn't ask "why do you hold that position?"

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to William in post #38]

Obviously, my debate question was not a legitimate debate question as it did not go far enough to elicit responses beyond a "yes" or "no". With the exception of only two, all the replies I received knew exactly what I meant and I thank them for the grace in overlooking my blunder.

What blunder?

The debate question seemed to be a yes or no question. I think it was a blunder (but not a huge one) because I didn't ask "why do you hold that position?"

Not really a blunder at all. These questions often go wider, and it's pretty good that they do. Though not if we end up debating evolution, yet again.

[AgnosticBoy]

That's an odd one. NDE studies involving placing perceptual objects above the bed. (actually that sounds like OOB rather than NDE which is not hovering above the body in the room, but seeing some remote scene). To do that it would require placing a perceptual object out of sight in anticipation of an OOB event occurring. How would they know?

I don't believe that the NDE and the out-of-body experience are distinct. The OOB usually involves experiencing things in this world except you're at a different vantage point (i.e. out of your body), whereas the NDE involves experiences of other worlds and occurs during a near-death event. However, I think that the OOB can be part of an NDE, like if a near-death event starts off as an OOB and then progresses into some other unearthly world (i.e. Heaven).

Are we sure that 'studies' does not mean 'anecdotal claim'? Especially as a 'study' of an NDE sounds more like an OOB event. Perhaps a link to one or two of these Studies.

Luckily, I was able to find Dr. Sam Parnia's AWARE study for free. You can read it here: https://ifac.univ-nantes.fr/IMG/pdf/awa ... _study.pdf (it's a short read actually and it's free!). Dr. Sam Parnia used these perceptual targets that I talked about in my last post. Refer to pg. 1800, last paragraph, of the study.

I think part of the focus was on the OOBs because those can be objectively verifiable if the person was experiencing their environment (the room in the hospital, around their body, etc). No one reported seeing these images and Dr. Parnia a potential reason for that result in his study (pg. 1804):

the observation that 78% of CA events took place in areas without shelves illustrates the challenge in objectively testing the claims of VA in CA using our proposed methodology.

CA= cardiac arrest
VA= visual awareness