A couple days ago, I decided to debate a guy on an atheist blog about the actuality of the Near-Death Experience. It's been a fairly civil discussion thus far - although he's starting to repeat some of the same points, and continues to leave out some of the most valuable evidence regarding the Near-Death Experience. He has yet to respond to my last post - and I have a feeling he will resort to sophism and personal attacks pretty soon. The rate at which he makes 'blanket statements' about NDE's is becoming more frequent, leading me to believe he's getting frustrated. Here are some of the points he made regarding the NDE, and some of my responses. His initials are 'AA,' so that's what I'll call him here.
AA: The fact that the NDE experience varies per culture goes against the actuality of the Near-Death Experience.
My Response: First, AA continues to believe that the differences are far greater than they actually are. In doing research, it is really only Hindu's that tend to see things other than the standard elements of the NDE. Across North America, Europe, and China, the NDE is very consistent with it's core elements.
Even if we said there were differences - let us first examine the core experience, which usually involves a tunnel, life review, seeing a light, etc. The problem with saying it's a cultural phenomenon where people see what their culture's perception of death is, is that this doesn't match any preconceived notions of death people would have. He implies that it corresponds to religion, but nowhere in the Bible, that I know of, does it speak of us having an OBE, and hovering over our bodies after death, nor having a life-review, nor passing through a tunnel. Even the depiction of heaven given in revelation is far different than the typical NDE account.
The only thing that could be said about the NDE is that it's depiction of death is created by the NDE itself - but it's well known that persons who have not heard of the NDE are just as likely to experience it as those who haven't. It's also notoriously independent of religion, age, gender, and race (Ring, p.18). Even if many concessions are made, regarding the core experience of the NDE as a cultural phenomenon simply doesn't fit the evidence. Naturally - we can only expect some people to see different things, and interpret things based on their culture, but again, to claim it as a cultural phenomenon does not coincide with the evidence.
AA: Persons, like test pilots, sometimes experience OBE's, and other similar aspects of the NDE when not near-death. This is something the afterlife theory cannot account for.
My Response: The afterlife theory supposes that there is a 'spirit' or 'essence' that resides in our body, that detaches itself upon death. Obviously, this involves the assumption that the mind and body are separate entities. But if this is the case - we can expect our 'spirit' to leave our body in times when it perceives danger, but are not actually 'near death.' In fact - some people who have NDE's report leaving their body before actually undergoing biological death, like in the case of drowning. They report they sensed they were about to die, and left their body without having to experience the trouble of dying.
What I'm curious, is how does this fit into the dying brain hypothesis? If the brain is not 'dying,' then it should not be experiencing this separation if the explanation is of the physiological sort.
Other reasons why a physiological explanation is lacking, without resorting to individual problems with each theory:
-Take for the example, the tunnel. Some people experience a tunnel, some a door, some a staircase, some simply crossing a dark plain to the other realm. If a physiological explanation we're occurring, we should expect uniformity. How could a physiological explanation account for the broad aspect of 'crossing into another realm?'
- Whatever the explanation is - it must be utterly convincing, to the point where people are convinced beyond a doubt what they experienced was real. NDE's are able to decipher between these 'hallucinations' and their actual NDE.
Other points I have been making since the beginning, that he continues to ignore:
- Verified 'verdical' experiences (I can't fault him too much for this, because the only book he read is 25 years old, and is about the only materialist account available to explain away the NDE. Since this book has been written, many more corroborated 'verdical' experiences have been confirmed, which the author of the before mentioned book ignores - and later admits - are inexplicable)
- Significantly more cases where are not verified by hospital personnel, yet are reported by researchers such as Kenneth Ring and Raymond Moody in their books.
- Even more cases which patients claim to witness conversations remote from their body, which are later told to their family, which of course amazes them.
- Evidence for Death-Bed visions
- Evidence of 'foresight' reported by researchers (this evidence is weird stuff!).
- Many of the books on the subject are written by people who go into the NDE as actual 'skeptics,' only to change their mind, believing it can't be accounted for in naturalistic terms. Typically, only those who go in with the agenda to create a materialistic account (like Blackmore fully admits in her book) write negatively against the NDE.
As I continue to say, the explanatory scope is just not there for any competing theory, whether it be psychological or physiological. There are good reasons to reject other explanations, and the only theory that can account for verdical experiences is the afterlife theory. I'm going to continue to find atheists, and see if they can actually justify their claims that the NDE, and afterlife evidence in general, can be accounted for in naturalistic terms.
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