Near Death experiences and the scientific method.

[leroy]

I don't. I accept that they are likely produced via hypoxia and other neurological phenomena, not magic.

.

Ok don’t label them as “magic” if you don’t want, you can use any other label.

my question is how do you suggest we should test if someone had a “real “out of body experience, rather than it being an illusion or a dream?.............. my suggestion is “if he can report accursedly stuff from the real world (like the TV show that his room neighbor above was watching) if you have a better method please share it.

 

[Koldo]

Ok don’t label them as “magic” if you don’t want, you can use any other label.

my question is how do you suggest we should test if someone had a “real “out of body experience, rather than it being an illusion or a dream?.............. my suggestion is “if he can report accursedly stuff from the real world (like the TV show that his room neighbor above was watching) if you have a better method please share it.

I don't think we can test it...
Not ethically at least.

Those random reports could be completely made up. What we would actually need is scientists figuring out how to make people experience NDE reliably and then test what is going on. Clearly not worth the risk.

 

[tas8831]

Ok don’t label them as “magic” if you don’t want, you can use any other label.

OK - fantasies?

my question is how do you suggest we should test if someone had a “real “out of body experience, rather than it being an illusion or a dream?.............. my suggestion is “if he can report accursedly stuff from the real world (like the TV show that his room neighbor above was watching) if you have a better method please share it.

That would be interesting but as we have seen, people involved in these sorts of things often change or fabricate their story and/or get caught up in the moment. The neighbor may not actually remember what they were watching on TV, but go along with it out of excitement. Like how people at faith healing events may go along with being 'healed' even when we find out that they didn't have anything wrong in the first place. They just got caught up in the moment.

 

[leroy]

OK - fantasies?


That would be interesting but as we have seen, people involved in these sorts of things often change or fabricate their story and/or get caught up in the moment. The neighbor may not actually remember what they were watching on TV, but go along with it out of excitement. Like how people at faith healing events may go along with being 'healed' even when we find out that they didn't have anything wrong in the first place. They just got caught up in the moment.

My claim is not that NDE and “out of body experiences” are real my claim is that these claims can be tested scientifically. .. the scientific method can in principle ether strongly support or refute these claims.

That would be interesting but as we have seen, people involved in these sorts of things often change or fabricate their story and/or get caught up in the moment.

Ok but we can test for “fabrications” … for example yesterday I was watching a youtube video about the Big Mac in Alaska (around 8pm or so)

If someone claims to have had a NDE and claims to have visited me and describes the video that I was watching I would surely consider it powerful and empirical evidence for NDE and real “Out of Body Experiences”………

agree?

Or would you insist on “nothing will ever count as evidence because it contradicts my naturalistic view of the universe“?

 

[KWED]

Near Death experiences are Testable (so lets test them)

Near Death Experiences (NDE) is a topic that I find fascinating, but for whatever reason (procrastination) I haven’t done any detailed research

But before doing any research I would like to know if I am applying the scientific method correctly.

· If there are verified examples of NDE I will conclude that NDE are probably real.

With this I mean that if the guy who had this experience most be capable of providing information about the external world that he could have not known before or during his “coma”

For example if he has an NDE in the hospital and he went to the room above and he provides an accurate description of who was in that room, what clothes where they using, what where they talking about etc. NDE should be considered real.

If such examples are inexistent then alleged NDE are probably just dreams or hallucinations.

So the next step is to do some research and see if there are verifiable examples of NDEs

So before doing the research would you add something? appart from verifiable examples would you add something else.

There isn't a single case where someone claiming a NDE has accurately described something that they couldn't have known through other means, or guessed within a reasonable degree of accuracy (eg: "I was in an operating theatre and doctors and nurses were desperately trying to resuscitate me").

Another interesting point is that the vast majority of people experiencing near or actual "death" in hospitals, etc, do not have any NDEs.
Also, about half of people who claim to have had NDEs weren't actually in any danger of dying.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

My claim is not that NDE and “out of body experiences” are real my claim is that these claims can be tested scientifically. .. the scientific method can in principle ether strongly support or refute these claims.



Ok but we can test for “fabrications” … for example yesterday I was watching a youtube video about the Big Mac in Alaska (around 8pm or so)

If someone claims to have had a NDE and claims to have visited me and describes the video that I was watching I would surely consider it powerful and empirical evidence for NDE and real “Out of Body Experiences”………

agree?

Or would you insist on “nothing will ever count as evidence because it contradicts my naturalistic view of the universe“?

You do realize that being able to test something is not evidence for that something. You seem to be on the verge of concluding that testability equals validity.

 

[KWED]

IMHO.

There is so much that can not be explained with many NDE's except to conclude they were in another reality looking back at this reality.

My wife has had a couple and there is no other explanation but that of a spiritual reality outside of the body.

That's quite the non sequitur!
There are always better explanations for hallucinations under traumatic conditions than being in "another reality", whatever that means - so why do you believe that is the only conclusion?

It matters not what science offers on this subject as there are just some things that are taken on Faith.

IOW, "I am not interested in evidence or rational explanations, I want to believe in my own fantasy".
Brilliant!

 

[KWED]

There's also this review of a very interesting case. Note for those that don't know "veridical" means true in a propositional calculus (scientific) sense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veridicality

Corroboration of the Dentures Anecdote Involving Veridical Perception in a Near-Death Experience https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1074.5800&rep=rep1&type=pdf

ABSTRACT: One of the most striking examples of near-death experience
stories is the account of a clinically dead patient whose dentures were removed
from his mouth prior to resuscitation, and which dentures were then lost.
Days later the patient saw a nurse and told him that it was he who had
removed those dentures. The patient was right, but he should not have known
this information, because at the time the nurse had removed his dentures, the
patient was clinically dead. Since publication of this account in a prestigious
mainstream medical journal, speculations have abounded. In this article I
describe the investigation I undertook to put these speculations to rest and the
outcome of that investigation.

Not a very convincing case.
Firstly, as the report itself admits, it is anecdotal.
Second, if accurate, the man merely described what happened within his possible field of vision and hearing, not something he could not have possibly known.
Finally, confirmation bias. The place this is claimed to have happened was a centre dedicated to trying to prove NDEs.

 

[tas8831]

My claim is not that NDE and “out of body experiences” are real my claim is that these claims can be tested scientifically. .. the scientific method can in principle ether strongly support or refute these claims.

OK - how?

Ok but we can test for “fabrications” … for example yesterday I was watching a youtube video about the Big Mac in Alaska (around 8pm or so)

If someone claims to have had a NDE and claims to have visited me and describes the video that I was watching I would surely consider it powerful and empirical evidence for NDE and real “Out of Body Experiences”………

And if you were watching a YouTube video about the Big Mac in Alaska (around 8pm or so) but the person says they saw you watching
reruns of Gilligan's Island? There are people that would be like, "Wait... what? Oh... oh.. YES! I ... I.. WAS watching... what you just aid! Praise Jesus!'
Just like how people start embellishing and coordinating their accounts of supposed miracles.... And when you get down to it, NDEs are typically presented as miracles of a sort.

Or would you insist on “nothing will ever count as evidence because it contradicts my naturalistic view of the universe“?

It has nothing to do with contradiction, it has to do with a history of fraud, misinterpretation, misrepresentation, grifting, etc. AND there are reasonable reality-based explanations that do not rely on mysticism and such.

I am not like Ken Ham - I would not refuse to change my mind no matter what. But given what we DO know about this 'phenomenon', it would take more than mere anecdotes, no matter how heartfelt and sincerely they are delivered.

 

[tas8831]

Second, if accurate, the man merely described what happened within his possible field of vision and hearing, not something he could not have possibly known.

Even just being under anesthesia can allow for conditions that some could interpret as NDEs - I remember very briefly 'waking up' towards the end of a simple outpatient surgery I was having many years ago. I was sufficiently conscious to hear the surgeon and one of the nurses comment that it looked like I was coming to, but there was still a disconnect between my consciousness and my bodily sensations/awareness, felt like I was floating, in a kind of dream-state. But then I was out again until I was in recovery. I had been unconscious when I was brought into the operating suite, and was unconscious when I left it so I had no "real" experience of seeing the room, yet in that brief window of semi-consciousness, I could see instruments, equipment, the bright lights, etc. It would not surprise me that when this sort of thing happens to people who are of a particular mindset in the first place that it might seem like they were having an out of body experience or whatever.

 

[KWED]

As one who's been a student of this topic for literally decades now, let me say there are more Veridical NDEs than I will be able to recall.

The Case of Pam Reynolds:
In order to remove a life threatening aneurysm deep in her brain, Pam Reynolds underwent a rare surgical procedure called “Operation Standstill” in which the blood is drained from the body like oil from a car, stopping all brain, heart and organ activity. The body temperature is lowered to 60 degrees. While fully anesthesized, with sound-emitting earplugs, Pam’s ordeal began. Dr. Spetzler, the surgeon, was sawing into her skull when Pam suddenly heard the saw and began to observe the surgical procedure from a vantage point over his shoulder. She also heard what the nurses said to the doctors. Upon returning to consciousness, she was able to accurately describe the unique surgical instrument used and report the statements made by the nurses.20
A Report from a Dutch Nurse:
“During night shift an ambulance brings in a 44-year old cyanotic, comatose man into the coronary care unit… When we go to intubate the patient, he turns out to have dentures in his mouth. I remove these upper dentures and put them onto the ‘crash cart.’ [..] Only after more than a week do I meet again with the patient, who is by now back on the cardiac ward. The moment he sees me he says: ‘O, that nurse knows where my dentures are.’ I am very surprised. Then he elucidates: ‘You were there when I was brought into hospital and you took my dentures out of my mouth and put them onto that cart, it had all these bottles on it and there was this sliding drawer underneath, and there you put my teeth.’.”21

Maria’s Shoe
Kimberly Clark Sharp (1995) was a social worker in Harborview Hospital in Seattle when Maria was brought in unconscious from cardiac arrest. Sharp visited her the following day in a hospital room, at which point Maria described leaving her body and floating above the hospital. Desperate to prove that she had in fact left her body and was not crazy, she described seeing a worn dark blue tennis shoe on the ledge outside a window on the far side of the hospital. Not believing her but wanting to help, Sharp checked the ledge by pressing her face against the sealed windows and found a shoe that perfectly matched the details Maria had related.22

Visual Perception in the Blind

Dr. Kenneth Ring describes 21 cases of visual perception in the blind during their near-death experiences in his book Mindsight: Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind.



These are some of the things that made me a believer in the phenomena. My beliefs are that the NDE is the separation of the astral/mental body from the physical body. Death-like physical trauma triggers this separation and is usually permanent but in cases of physical recovery a return of the astral/mental to the physical occurs and that produces the classic Near Death Experience.

The Reynolds case is not evidence for out of body, paranormal events. She was under general anaesthetic for several hours, only part of which was under the standstill process. She did not "accurately describe" the surgical instrument, but even if she did, it is entirely possible that the was already aware of the tools that would be used during her procedure, as such things are regularly explained by hospital staff pre-operation.

The Merkawah Foundation case I have already dealt with.

The shoe case is just an uncorroborated claim by one person. It is only proof of people's willingness to accept anything that appears to support their own fantastical beliefs. We know people make stuff up for a wide variety of reasons, often irrational to others.

 

[KWED]

So if non Christians where to have "Christian NDEs" Would you accept tras as evidence for christianity?

If there is a religious afterlife, there can only be one. Therefore everyone should only report seeing one type of vision, that corresponds with the "true" religion.
If two people claim to have NDEs with one seeing Jesus and the other Vishnu, then at least one of them is wrong.
People hallucinate. We know this 100% certainty. We can have sensory experiences that we are convinced are real, but are not. It happens regularly to people of all ages, religions and cultures. It is a function of the human brain. Why would a glimpse of the afterlife ever be a better explanation than an hallucination based on existing experience?

 

[KWED]

That is awsome, just wondering, if these stories are real, why arent they use more offten by apolegetics. ?
is there any atheist that can refute these claims?

thanks for sharing

They are all anecdotal and have better natural explanations than the soul visiting the afterlife.
There are many explanations and refutations from medical and scientific professionals if you care to look for them.

We know people hallucinate. We know people can be mistaken or confused about events (especially traumatic ones), just look at the studies into eye-witness account accuracy. We know people make stuff up.
On the other hand, there is no evidence that consciousness is independent of the brain. There is no evidence for the supernatural.
So given this, the the more reasonable explanation will always be a natural, rational one.

 

[KWED]

Ok so what do you need to see, for it to be convincing enough?

What evidence would you accept for NDE…………. As far as I know this is a “new” area of research so it is a good time to make predictions and see what happens in the near future.

It would have to be a controlled experiment with testable results. People have conducted these. They have all failed to produce any evidence.

The real question should be - why do you find such dubious, easily explained, and refuted claims convincing?
Remember that the claim is that something truly extraordinary has happened. Something that would turn our established knowledge of science on its head. But some people will happily accept mere anecdote rather than demand something more robust. It seems there is a lot of confirmation bias at work here.

 

[KWED]

The claim is that people who experience NDEs describe accursedly stuff from the real world, things like the could have not known before the “coma”………things like the color of the t-shirt of the patient that was in the next room.

If these r} testimonies are real, you can’t explain them with neuroscience……..agree?

But there is no way of testing these claims after the fact, so they remain just claims.
Also, there could be a number of ways that a patient might seem aware of the colour of shirt the person in the next room was wearing.

If you want to understand the susceptibility of the human mind, try watching Derren Brown's TV programmes.

 

[KWED]

To me, I judge them to be a desperate attempt in the end to get these Veridical NDEs swept away as they are not within the worldview they have become attached to. Attachment to an ideology will make people do all types of contortionist arguing.

Not a fan of irony then?

In my best assessment with the quantity, quality and consistency of anecdotal Veridical NDE stories I have heard I am convinced beyond reasonable doubt that something is occurring that radically does not fit into the materialist's view of consciousness (and they don't like that). I was a materialist once and had to go with the evidence instead of trying to make the evidence fit my worldview.

IOW, person who believes in paranormal stuff more likely to accept a paranormal explanation, despite three being better natural explanations.
No **** Sherlock!

I can present ten more compelling Veridical NDE stories and I am sure a contortionist material explanation can be invented for all of them. I just don't find them in the end reasonable at all.

In the same way that "evidences for god" only seem compelling to people who already believe in that god, these stories (which is exactly what they are) are only compelling to people who want to believe in them. It's called confirmation bias, accepting flawed explanations because they conform with your existing position.

 

[KWED]

@leroy - the above from If you are looking to prove out-of-body experience, then that's where you need to focus. A near death experience means precisely that... the experience of a person during the moments they were near death - or possibly narrowed to meaning that they actually had to be "brought back" from some brink where no action would have left them in the relatively "dead" state they had entered.

Interestingly, about half of people who claim NDEs were never actually in any risk of dying!

 

[KWED]

No, I was giving my opinion on the likelihood for the 'explain-aways' being correct explanations for all these Veridical NDEs. After a time I feel the attempts are desperate attempts to hold a materialist worldview in place.

You: Look, magic!
Me: it's not magic, and here's the explanation why it isn't, using things we actually know.
You: Look, magic!
Me: it's not magic, and here's the explanation why it isn't, using things we actually know.
You: Look, magic!
Me: it's not magic, and here's the explanation why it isn't, using things we actually know.
You: I feel your explanations are desperate attempts to hold a materialist worldview in place.

All I am saying is that we have events not satisfactorily explainable by known science.

1. But they are, you just don't like it.
2. Even if they weren't, do you think that necessarily means there is no natural explanation? (Remember how many things there have been over history that you could have made that claim about).
If you think that there might be a natural explanation, why are you dismissing it and pushing the supernatural?

My judgement on the body of the more compelling Veridical NDE cases

Not compelling to rational people.

is that we are indeed dealing with a phenomena not understood by current science.

What phenomena is that? Remember that there is no evidence that these events actually happened as described. They are merely unverifiable claims.
So the phenomenon seems to be the credulity of people invested in a supernatural worldview. And that is pretty easy to explain.

 

[KWED]

In other contexts Anecdotes are verifiable, one can verify if a testimony is likely to be true or just lies or hallucinations. So why not using the same approach with NDE?

Its a fact that testimonies from people who claim to have had NDE exist.

And there are only 3 possible explanations for this fact.

1 the testimonies are lies

2 people had hallucinations that were wrongly interpreted as “out of body experiences”

3 the NDE are true and the out of body experiences where real

If there is a forth option please share it.

So my claim is 1 2 and 3 are testable and falsifiable, (at least to some degree) so lets see the testimonies on a case by case basis and see if “option 3” remains as the best explanation in any testimony,….

Is there anything wrong with this approach? Would you add something else.

In what way is an anecdote about what might have been an hallucination falsifiable, and how do you propose testing these claims after the event?

 

[KWED]

You are expected to refute the claims made in the research papers that where quoted earlier.

They aren't "research papers". They are just personal accounts of possible events.