Are NDEs merely hallucinations?

>Wouldn't all religious claims be false [or strongly in doubt] then, at least for the ones that took place thousands of years ago or even those that took place before modern recording equipment?

I wasn't addressing what's true or false. I took issue with the "investigated and verified" claim. I don't see how anyone can seriously argue that a case is "investigated and verified" when all we have is a report from a nurse, stating that an unnamed person at an unknown time had a certain experience.

Considering, say, Christian apologetics, quite a bit of effort is expended arguing that the Gospels offer first-hand eyewitness testimony--for example by pointing to the many obscure historical and geographical details accurately reported in them. Evidence is offered that Jesus and the Apostles lived and died in certain times and places. And arguments are made for at least partial independence between the accounts--the idea being that we have more than one first-hand version of the same events. That all seems quite far removed from the poor state of the 12-digit serial number NDE case. If apologists had nothing to say on the Resurrection other than "Simon Peter said that an unknown person rose from the dead in the past," I don't think there'd have been any Christians of impressive caliber in the 17th-21st centuries.

I'm not religious myself in any formal sense, but I'd rather such topics were not used as debating tools on this forum. I do think religion serves a valuable purpose and illuminates an aspect of what it is to be human.

It simply isn't the place to do so. In another time and place I've fiercely debated those issues and reached my own peace with what I believe. Out of respect for any members or even lurkers here whether religious or not I think it's preferable not to place these topics under academic scrutiny or it could overrun the whole forum and as can be seen by the title "Psi/science Quest" it isn't our purpose here.

The following portion of your post is so irrelevant to what I wrote that it led me to wrongly suspect that you'd accidentally quoted me and had intended to respond to someone else:

>Like in most skeptic attacks on the spiritual reality of NDEs, this ignores the strong correlation of the time period of NDE consciousness and the time period during which the NDEr's brain was disfunctional, which correlation directly contradicts the physicalist assumption that the mind and consciousness are the physical brain. This existing correlation factor automatically drastically raises the likelihood that at least some number of veridical NDE OBE cases are genuine. 

My post clearly wasn't intended as a wholesale attack on supernatural models of NDEs. I wrote this at the beginning to make that obvious:

>I'm inclined to think there are genuine supernatural NDEs.

You can look through my post history to see that I'm not a debunker, by any stretch.

What I took issue with was your highly exaggerated, inaccurate description of the case collection in The Self does not Die. After opening with your bold "more than 125 investigated and verified veridical NDEs" claim, which I observed was false, you, with no real acknowledgement of error, make recourse to the truly atrocious "one white crow argument." All James' argument tells us is that the standard physicalist or materialist or &c. paradigm would be shattered by even one truly paranormal event. That's true enough, but in the real world, almost never, and perhaps in fact never, can one event provide such strong evidence for one particular theoretical explanation of it, against competing possible explanations, that only that one theory is plausible.

Unfortunately this obvious aspect of the problem is ignored by almost every person I've ever seen employ the "one white crow" argument, and for them it effectively amounts to the idea that we shouldn't care about quality of evidence, we should just gawk at the massiveness of reports and say, "Oh geeeeeeeeeee, there's so many of them! At least one of them must be true!" Nobody who isn't already convinced is impressed by that argument, NO ONE. When is ONE OBSERVATION of some uncertain, let alone controversial, phenomenon or effect EVER taken to be sufficient to establish a theory in science? Everyone who's familiar with the most basic of basics understands that it's virtually impossible for a single case to be strong enough for an entire theory (for example, that NDEs are events in which a non-material soul that is the true seat of consciousness separates from a dying body and continues to have conscious experiences) to hang on it. There's a reason that "replication" is such a fixation in the world of experimental research, especially lately when so many effects apparently "demonstrated" to be "real" sometimes for decades or even a century plus are turning out to be hokum in more rigorous tests that cannot reproduce them (cracks are showing in parapsychology because of this same problem: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/1...sos.191375 https://journalofscientificexploration.o.../view/1903).

Note also that even the most promising and (among all cases so far gathered) thoroughly investigated NDEs have not proven to be watertight--far from it. That isn't to say they've been "debunked," only that enough reasonable doubt about them has been raised that to pretend we have anything like the (almost certainly) mythical and indestructible "one white crow" in NDE research is flat-out delusional. The most impressive NDEs have all been identified in retrospective studies, usually years after they happened. That already is a huge problem for any "one white crow" argument. The burden cannot reasonably be said to be on skeptics to explain away every NDE case when, time and again, they suffer from the same weaknesses that leave room for doubt. It's the proponent's job to find NDE evidence not plagued by the same flaws that give rise to useless, nowhere-going, irresolvable debates about fundamentally ambiguous data.

I've been studying paranormal phenomena for a long time. I feel personally convinced that many authentic paranormal events have happened. But it was not easy to come to that conclusion, largely because proponents of your kind consistently exaggerate the strength of the evidence, an illusion which then dissolves when someone who cares about accuracy presses into the details. Regrettably my impression is that the entire field of parapsychology is dying because it's filled with researchers who have this same basically anti-empirical mindset. They don't want real inquiry that could give even very critically minded people something approaching certainty that the paranormal is real. They want to sit on accumulated cases and experimental evidence, exaggerate the strength and ignore the weaknesses of what they've collected (see studies I linked above to consider efforts to investigate psi without those weaknesses), and, when pushed hard enough on the shortcomings of what they offer, fall back on the "well ... IT ONLY TAKES ONE!" line. These are people who act like they're AFRAID that there really is nothing to what they study and who accordingly don't want to take research as far as it can go. They want to cling to the HOPE that there's something there. And the field is crumbling because of this dogmatist trash that is offensive to any real scientific spirit. Dean Radin is one especially galling case in point. He essentially refuses to do proper confirmatory experimental research. He jumps around from one experimental paradigm to another to rack up an endless array of dubious exploratory effects. And in the face of a major failure of a key psi effect (Bem's experiment 1) to replicate in a proper confirmatory design he gives us this pitiful rationalization that amounts to a statement that scientific rigor is bad if it doesn't get him the results he wants!:

>Obsessively strict pre-registration and detailed recording of all aspects of the study are predicated on two assumptions: (1) observation of a system under study does not affect that system, and (2) exact repeatability establishes if a phenomenon is scientifically "real." These assumptions work quite well for many macroscopic physical systems. They do not work quite as well for living systems. And they work poorly when it comes to the study of subtle psychological effects, including psi. They also sidestep the QM uncertainty principle and QM observational effects, which tells me that while those two assumptions are considered sacrosanct requirements within science today, they are not appropriate for the study of all possible things.

Paranormal research deserves better than this.

I think that despite your caveats you inherently mostly dismiss the evidentiality of most NDE accounts regardless of quality, and this justifies my writing off your writings here on this, since in your zeal for scientific credibility you are essentially blanket discounting the value of most human witness account testimony, regardless of the quality of the witness statements and of the investigations of same.

The second edition of The Self Does Not Die by Rivas, Dirven and Smit and published by IANDS came out in 2023 and contained 24 new cases over the 2016 first version, for 128 total cases. Some of the new cases are among the most evidential NDE cases to date. For example, Stephanie Arnold's account (case 3.39) has at least nine elements that were idiosyncratic and purely visual in nature--occurring when she was physically unable to see them, yet they were corroborated by eyewitnesses, frequently by the person whom Arnold perceived. Four of the witnesses were the principal members of her medical team, whose corroborative testimonies were video recorded. Tellingly, the principal features of this excellent case mirror those (that have long been noted) of very many others which have less though still sufficient evidence. In order to discount this case you have to dismiss the evidentiality of all this.

Aside from this, I also have to discount your claims and rants about the supposed bankruptcy of parapsychology, and at the same time thank you for grouping me in with Dean Radin in this. I could use such company.

I think the best response is to invite you to plausibly in detail dismiss the evidentiality of one of the best cases, especially after you peruse the complete account in the book (available in Kindle). There is an old saying: the Devil is in  the details. It will be interesting.

Case 3.39, Stephanie Arnold. It is a long, detailed and complicated account occupying many pages in the book, and even a partial summary quote is lengthy - I can only give a small very abridged sampling to give a comprehensive taste of the overall episode.

"On May 30, 2013: 41-year-old Stephanie Arnold suffered a cardiac arrest and near-death experience during the delivery of her second child. This case is notable for several reasons. Her cardiac arrest was caused by a very rare condition known as amniotic fluid embolism (AFE). AFE results from amniotic fluid entering the mother’s bloodstream causing an anaphylactic reaction. AFE occurs in only 1 in 40,000 births, and most obstetricians never see one in their careers. This condition is frequently fatal or causes severe brain damage, yet Arnold survived with very few lasting deficits. For several months prior to delivery, Arnold experienced seven premonitory experiences which indicated to her that her condition would progress into a serious placenta accreta stage and hemorrhage which would lead to her death, but that her new-born son Jacob would survive. Arnold brought her concerns to her medical team and took additional steps to help ensure a positive outcome, but her premonitions and concerns were largely dismissed as merely pregnancy anxiety.
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Nevertheless, all of the elements of her premonitions came to pass: She had initial bleeding; she developed placenta accreta; the baby was fine; she was put under general anesthesia, in an induced coma; she nearly bled out; she had a hysterectomy; and she died, but only temporarily. Arnold woke up after six days of induced coma with no memory of the experience. Her earliest prior memory was that she was prepped for a C-section and her belly was painted with disinfectant soap. Arnold did not remember her NDE until she underwent hypnotic regression, during which she re-lived her NDE with its vivid out-of-body perceptions.
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Arnold video recorded her regression sessions, played the recordings to the key members of her medical team, and video recorded their responses which corroborated several key perceptions during her experience. Additional veridical perceptions at a distance from her physical body have also been corroborated, as well as an encounter with a deceased person previously unknown to Arnold who later was identified (see Chapter 5 for a discussion of cases of this type). Arnold has meticulously documented the confirmatory testimony (Arnold, 2015), including videos of many of the eyewitness statements (Arnold, 2021).
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In addition, through a video interview with Arnold and e-mails with others, NDE researchers Robert and Suzanne Mays confirmed additional aspects of Arnold’s veridical perceptions at a distance from her physical body.
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NDE OBE begins

In the regression session, Arnold described what was happening at this point. "I literally feel myself rip out of my body, and I’m standing next to the EKG unit. Next to me, on the other side, is Grace Lim, the only doctor who flagged my file. Actually, . . . I wasn’t standing. I was floating a few inches above the floor. Then, amazingly, I floated out of the OR and down the back hallways to see Adina with Tessie, the nanny, in the Labor and Delivery Room. Adina was playing with the blood pressure cuff, and Tessie was trying to get her to sit down and listen to a story. Adina was singing and dancing around and pretending she was the cartoon character Doc McStuffins. It made me laugh, and then I became sad and nervous. I had to go back to the OR and check in on “me” again." (Arnold, 2021, p. 20; 2015, p. 138).
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Arnold’s description implies that her spirit separated from her physical body before the operation. This phenomenon is well-known in NDE research, i.e., the NDEr anticipates dying and has an out-of-body experience. Such “anticipatory NDEs” were first documented by Albert von St. Gallen Heim in 1892 in cases of falls during mountain climbing (Noyes & Kletti, 1972). In this narrative, we will assume that Arnold’s NDE begins with her out-of-body experience in the OR before the delivery.
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Surgery

On returning to the OR in her NDE, Arnold observed her physical body on the operating table. "I was hoping that the brutality about to happen to my body was over, but I came back too soon. My listless body, with eyes open, was still on the table just waiting for them to start the operation. I could see that my spirit wasn’t planted on the ground. And I could feel it. It felt as if I was as light as a feather. My spirit was actually floating, and I knew my spirit wasn’t in my body. I felt the opposite when I looked at my body on the table. I could feel the heaviness of my body on the operating table as life was getting sucked out of me. My body was just dying. (Arnold, 2021, p. 20; 2015, p. 139). In the regression, Arnold takes a third-person perspective describing herself as an outside observer would. Her heart is beating fast, and the nurse is telling her to calm down . . . that it’s not good for the baby, that she doesn’t want to put the baby in harm’s way, so calm down. . . . The baby is getting ready. She can’t move her arms and her legs. She’s shivering. They’re asking if she wants more blankets. She’s in tears, telling me that she doesn’t want to die. She’s angry that she’s in this position. (Arnold, 2021, p. 21; 2015, pp. 141–142).
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Experiences while flatlined

I realized I was feeling the moment of my death. I watched as my spirit’s finger slowed down to a final TAP, and I heard the beep from the monitor as I flatlined. I looked down at the table and saw my eyes roll back. I heard them screaming. They say, “Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie!” And Nicole [Higgins] runs to the head of the bed. “She’s turning blue,” she says, and the EKG machine goes flat, and I’m done. My body just collapses. I hear them say, “Hit the button. Call the code. Hit the button.” They hit the button, and it seems like 40 doctors and nurses rush in and they’re like, “Get the cart.”
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(Comment): Within a few seconds of the EKG flatlining and Arnold’s eyes rolling back, it is reasonable to assume that Stephanie Arnold’s brain could no longer support consciousness. However, her memory from the regression shows that her consciousness continued out-of-body. At this point, Arnold reported seeing a “weird flash,” but her focus continued on events occurring in the OR. "I watched as Julie [Levitt] stood frozen in shock. I saw Nicole [Higgins] put a tube down my throat and got my breathing back. I gagged. I looked down at my C-section and saw blood pouring out. I felt them jabbing my arm as they put another IV into it and called for another blood bag. They cut into my side to put in another tube. The blood they were putting into me was pouring out of me seconds later. I was feeling lighter and lighter."

Account reflects a continuous NDE

"I watched every detail as they brought me back to life [after 37 seconds]. I could see my blood on Julie’s face as she wiped her forehead, and I could hear Nicole speaking very loudly and asking for different medicines." (Arnold, 2021, p. 24; 2015, pp. 146–147). (Comment): After Arnold’s heartbeat was restored, she was intubated, her eyes were taped shut, and she was put in a medically induced coma. From this point on, she was in a coma. She never reported coming back in her body in the OR. Her account reflects a continuous NDE.
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Remarks

Depending on how one chooses to count the specific perceptual elements in Stephanie Arnold’s NDE, at least nine elements were idiosyncratic and purely visual in nature, occurring at a distant location or at a time when Arnold’s vision was blocked behind the drape and/or when she was in cardiac arrest or in a coma. All of these perceptions were corroborated by eyewitnesses, frequently the person whom Arnold perceived. Skeptical analyses of Arnold’s apparently nonphysical veridical perceptions (AVPs) should strive to explain all of these individual instances without resorting to ad hoc explanations that can’t be applied to some of the other instances or indeed to all of Arnold’s AVPs.

It is instructive to read the actual corroborating assessments of the principal doctors who were involved in Arnold’s case. The accounts by these medical personnel given in the book take too much space for this extreme condensation. These medical doctors were attending obstetric anesthesiologist Nicole Higgins, attending OB-GYN Julie Levitt, obstetric anesthesiology fellow Grace Lim, and resident gynecologic oncologist Hyo Park.

I'm not religious myself in any formal sense, but I'd rather such topics were not used as debating tools on this forum. I do think religion serves a valuable purpose and illuminates an aspect of what it is to be human.

It simply isn't the place to do so. In another time and place I've fiercely debated those issues and reached my own peace with what I believe. Out of respect for any members or even lurkers here whether religious or not I think it's preferable not to place these topics under academic scrutiny or it could overrun the whole forum and as can be seen by the title "Psi/science Quest" it isn't our purpose here.

That's fair, I asked the question specifically because I wanted to see how people evaluate witnesses so I bear the blame of starting this with @RViewer88

I probably could have just discussed any historical claim, but figured religious witnesses are witnessing something "paranormal" in the broad sense.

IMO the divide between general witnesses and witnesses to the paranormal is a false one, in some sense begging the question by assuming the latter is more suspect b/c it violates an assumed picture of what reality should be. I've heard mundane tall tales from people I dismiss, and paranormal stories that I believe.

I'm not religious myself in any formal sense, but I'd rather such topics were not used as debating tools on this forum. I do think religion serves a valuable purpose and illuminates an aspect of what it is to be human.

It simply isn't the place to do so. In another time and place I've fiercely debated those issues and reached my own peace with what I believe. Out of respect for any members or even lurkers here whether religious or not I think it's preferable not to place these topics under academic scrutiny or it could overrun the whole forum and as can be seen by the title "Psi/science Quest" it isn't our purpose here.

That makes sense to me; as you say, it's a parapsychology/psychical research forum, not a religion/theology forum. In this case both @Sciborg_S_Patel and @sbu made relevant points that I thought should be addressed, however. Also I tried to avoid turning it into a "why my religious views are correct" post. Rather, I attempted to explain the kinds of arguments made in favor of my views that I take seriously and why, without evaluating the arguments themselves.

That makes sense to me; as you say, it's a parapsychology/psychical research forum, not a religion/theology forum. In this case both @Sciborg_S_Patel and @sbu made relevant points that I thought should be addressed, however. Also I tried to avoid turning it into a "why my religious views are correct" post. Rather, I attempted to explain the kinds of arguments made in favor of my views that I take seriously and why, without evaluating the arguments themselves.

I do post various arguments for God, such as the recent Argument from Psycho-Physical Harmony.

These don't point to any particular religion, but IMO have value for the general topics of discussion because if God exists - or at least some Designer(s) for the universe - it shows at least one Mind is over and above all that is "physical" and can act upon said physical.

But if that's true for one particular Mind it can be true for others...

I think that despite your caveats you inherently mostly dismiss the evidentiality of most NDE accounts regardless of quality, and this justifies my writing off your writings here on this, since in your zeal for scientific credibility you are essentially blanket discounting the value of most human witness account testimony, regardless of the quality of the witness statements and of the investigations of same.

The second edition of The Self Does Not Die by Rivas, Dirven and Smit and published by IANDS came out in 2023 and contained 24 new cases over the 2016 first version, for 128 total cases. Some of the new cases are among the most evidential NDE cases to date. For example, Stephanie Arnold's account (case 3.39) has at least nine elements that were idiosyncratic and purely visual in nature--occurring when she was physically unable to see them, yet they were corroborated by eyewitnesses, frequently by the person whom Arnold perceived. Four of the witnesses were the principal members of her medical team, whose corroborative testimonies were video recorded. Tellingly, the principal features of this excellent case mirror those (that have long been noted) of very many others which have less though still sufficient evidence. In order to discount this case you have to dismiss the evidentiality of all this.

Aside from this, I also have to discount your claims and rants about the supposed bankruptcy of parapsychology, and at the same time thank you for grouping me in with Dean Radin in this. I could use such company.

I think the best response is to invite you to plausibly in detail dismiss the evidentiality of one of the best cases, especially after you peruse the complete account in the book (available in Kindle). There is an old saying: the Devil is in  the details. It will be interesting.

Case 3.39, Stephanie Arnold. It is a long, detailed and complicated account occupying many pages in the book, and even a partial summary quote is lengthy - I can only give a small very abridged sampling to give a comprehensive taste of the overall episode.



It is instructive to read the actual corroborating assessments of the principal doctors who were involved in Arnold’s case. The accounts by these medical personnel given in the book take too much space for this extreme condensation. These medical doctors were attending obstetric anesthesiologist Nicole Higgins, attending OB-GYN Julie Levitt, obstetric anesthesiology fellow Grace Lim, and resident gynecologic oncologist Hyo Park.

>I think that despite your caveats you inherently mostly dismiss the evidentiality of most NDE accounts regardless of quality, and this justifies my writing off your writings here on this, since in your zeal for scientific credibility you are essentially blanket discounting the value of most human witness account testimony, regardless of the quality of the witness statements and of the investigations of same.

This started because you inaccurately presented the material in The Self does not Die as a whole. You still haven't acknowledged that. I've lost count of how many times I've read about some seemingly promising paranormal evidence, gotten my hopes up, as it were--but then, upon looking into it, have realized it was described in a distorted way and wasn't nearly as evidential as claimed. After a while, this becomes infuriating. How many people have been completely turned off of the paranormal because they repeatedly had this experience of getting an exaggerated picture of the evidence that didn't hold up to scrutiny? I myself have certainly had periods of serious doubt because of this dynamic served up by careless true-believerism.

You seem to believe I'm some Randi-type debunker slob who unthinkingly rejects eyewitness testimony as if it counts for nothing. So why did I write this, then? https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-h...1#pid53051

The reality seems to be that anyone, even a paranormal proponent (like me), is on your sh** list if they don't toe the "afterlife has already been proven" line. Ever wonder why the same old debates about NDEs, OBEs, deathbed visions, &c. go on interminably and are irresolvable with the current evidence? Maybe what we have isn't good enough to command the rational assent of people in general? Maybe we need to stop sitting on our laurels and pretending that piling up retrospective cases with the usual weaknesses is going to move the debate forward or, even worse, that what's been piled up is already sufficient?

>Aside from this, I also have to discount your claims and rants about the supposed bankruptcy of parapsychology, and at the same time thank you for grouping me in with Dean Radin in this. I could use such company.

Right. So more dogmatic true believerism. "You're saying things I don't want to hear! Must be wrong!" You can't show how any of my criticisms are wrong--you won't even attempt to--you just cotton on to what you like and plow forward assuming its certain truth.

Meanwhile, you expect me to go through the arduous task of disentangling a mess of a case that, like almost every other notable NDE, is a confusing jumble of claims retrospectively gathered up and accordingly open to doubt at who knows how many points because of the unavoidable limitations of such cases. (To properly do that, I wouldn't be able to take Rivas et al.'s summary for granted, by the way, given errors I've found elsewhere in their work. I'd have to track down all the original sources and go from there.) I see the first corroboration Rivas et al. offer is from someone known to the NDEr, received two years after the NDEr had written an account of her experience (her 2021 Bigelow submission), and eight years after she wrote a book about it. Arnold also has had a website about her experience for a number of years--or at least used to, since I visited it a long time ago--and publicly spoke about it a number of times prior to 2023, when the corroboration in question was received. Taking the perspective of someone not already sympathetic to paranormal claims, how convincing is such a corroboration going to be?

@nbtruthman Very curious. I see almost all of the key references in Rivas et al.'s writeup of Arnold's case are "unpublished." Is anyone not in the NDE true-believer guild allowed to review these materials, I wonder? Is there any opportunity to compare the full raw recording of Arnold's hypnotic regression to what the doctors and other eyewitnesses had to say? (And on that, how long after her surgery was Arnold's hypnotic regression? Rivas et al., incredibly, don't say. What kind of opportunity might Arnold have had to learn what happened to her, or to have details leaked to her, prior to the regression? How long after her surgery were doctors approached about all of this? Did they rely on objective notes about the surgery--how much of their "confirmation" depended just on their recall?) Was any sufficiently and relevantly detailed overall picture of how the operation went recorded prior to the doctors and other witnesses being exposed to Arnold's recording of her hypnotic regression and to Arnold's potentially, perhaps probably, motivated questioning? (And is it available for us to examine?) If not, to what extent were the doctors' recollections influenced by their exposure to the recording of the hypnotic regression and all the rest? Imagine what a lawyer would say if it were to turn out that the cops' case against his client relied on testimony that the police collected by first showing every witness a video narrating their (the cops') version of events and then taking statements. From what I can tell, all of the critical medical testimony "corroborating" Arnold's case was given after (or in the process of) the medical personnel saw and heard the video of Arnold's hypnotic regression presenting her version of the events of interest. This is about as bad a way to go about taking eyewitness testimony as can be imagined because of the high risk of memory contamination it creates, which anyone in law enforcement, criminal law, or memory psychology understands. 

Most of the effort in assembling this case seems to have been made by the NDEr herself, Arnold, who has clearly not spared any effort to profit from it (book, Bigelow Essay Content submission, TV appearances, and more), and hardly can be deemed a neutral investigator given her firm beliefs as to what her experience represents. Does any of this raise some concern in your mind, at all?

This is why cases like this are fundamentally unable to resolve contentious debates, and why NDE "research" is steadily devolving into a bad joke, especially everything IANDS related.

I'm sure a bunch of people are going to jump down my throat for this post--which is one of the reasons I keep using the edit button to fiddle with it like a nutjob--but if a case this cack-handedly investigated and opaquely presented, with the key supporting documents all hidden away "unpublished" somewhere, is being held up as some PARAGON of NDE evidence, the situation is simply atrocious. Anyone who truly cares about paranormal research cannot abide stuff like this. We have to recognize that this is NOT EVEN CLOSE to good enough. Whether Arnold experienced genuine paranormal phenomena ends up being essentially irrelevant because the completely unacceptable approach to investigation throws such a cloud over the whole thing from the outset. The proponent is then left having to scrounge around for bits and pieces to "save" against the litany of reasonable skeptical objections enabled by the awful investigative technique--in other words, the same old, same old non-progressive merry-go-round of stagnant NDE arguments and counterarguments will prevail yet again.

@nbtruthman Man, going into this case, it just gets WORSE and WORSE.

Rivas et al. give the following to us as "CORROBORATION" of the ostensible paranormal NDE perception that "The brunette nurse pushed the code button":

>In a video recorded interview [unpublished], Arnold described that she saw a nurse with brunette hair hit the code button and that her perception was verified by Nicole Higgins and others, but Arnold doesn't recall the nurse's name.

>Arnold in unpublished video interview: "I saw the brunette nurse hit the button for the code ... I explained it to [Nicole] and she said, 'Oh, that was [so and so],' but I don't remember the name after all these years. When I went back [to the one-year anniversary at the hospital], I said [it was] the nurse, the brunette, that hit the button for the code. They said, 'Yeah, that was [so and so].' And then I don't remember [her name]."

This is supposed to be a KEY "veridical perception" that has been verified. The above is the SUM TOTAL of the "verification" of this specific alleged perception. Rivas et al. tell us that "Arnold has meticulously documented the confirmatory testimony." This is what passes for meticulous record keeping in the world of IANDS NDE "research" nowadays, apparently. In the mind of what reasonable person is this deemed corroboration of anything? And why has the work on this case been so lazy that no one with IANDS has bothered to interview Nicole Higgins to confirm this point or to determine the name of this brunette nurse and interview her? Is that some impossible task?

When you compare this slop to the painstaking efforts of 19th-century psychical researchers, it's breathtaking. The field has somehow gone BACKWARDS. It's now LESS ABLE to do basic research than a group of people who could BARELY AFFORD TO PUBLISH THEIR OWN WRITING IN THE 1800s. Members of the early SPR, such as Podmore and Gurney, traveled all around the UK interviewing paranormal claimants as well as alleged corroborating witnesses DIRECTLY. 

>The methodology [of the early SPR researchers] involved as far as possible the collection of evidence according to a structured questionnaire and a set of criteria. These were: first hand eyewitness accounts were to be prioritised and collected; such accounts had to be told to a third party before knowledge of the death/distress of the phantasm; there had to be as much corroborative detail as possible ; a judgement had to be made as to the educational level, balance and trustworthiness of the percipient; and the case material had to be tested through direct personal interviews with members of the Sidgwick group who travelled far and wide to complete this task.

>a case had to have been a first-hand eyewitness account by the correspondent, and the ESP experience it described had to have been told to a third party before the details of the distant individual’s situation were learned. As evidence of the latter, each numbered case in Phantasms is accompanied by corroborative statements from one or more individuals who either had been present with the experient when the experience occurred, or were told about the experience by the experient very soon afterward. It was also necessary to ascertain that none of the important details in the correspondent’s account had been altered or embellished by comparing it against the account of the third party and/or documented records. It is clear from the accounts that Gurney et al. went to great lengths to verify the details contained within each case. As eminent psychologist William James (1887) commented in his review of Phantasms in the pages of Science:

>Nothing, in fact, is more striking than the zeal with which [Gurney et al.] cross-examine the witnesses; nothing is more admirable than the labor they spend in testing the accuracy of the stories, so far as can be done by ransacking old newspapers for obituaries and the like. If a story contains a fire burning in a grate—presto the Greenwich records are searched to see whether the thermometer warranted a fire on that day; if it contains a medical practitioner, the medical register is consulted to make sure he is correct; etc. (James, 1887:19, italics in original)

Yet in an era of ubiquitous smart phones and internet access, the crack investigators of IANDS can't be bothered to go beyond a "trust me" from a claimant highly invested in the paranormality of her experience. That's where we're at. Let that sink in.

@sbu @Brian

Yet in an era of ubiquitous smart phones and internet access, the crack investigators of IANDS can't be bothered to go beyond a "trust me" from a claimant highly invested in the paranormality of her experience. That's where we're at. Let that sink in.

@sbu @Brian

First off, I’m impressed with how quickly you were able to dismantle these cases. I should, of course, double-check the information you have provided, but I will take your word for it since I consider all anecdotal evidence to be only hypothesis-generating. In other words, that book would never convince me of anything. Therefore, it’s not on my reading list.

IANDS has been taken over by the self-help billion-dollar industry and hasn’t produced anything serious for at least 15 years. I never visit their website anymore. I'm even a bit worried about Sam Parnia, to be honest, if his celebrity status is starting to cloud his conclusions. I would love to see one of his peers among the several thousand in the western world who have revived a patient from cardiac arrest come forward with similar profound conclusions.

There’s an enormous hype associated with NDEs, and one has to be very skeptical of any claimants in this space. Additionally, people often cannot relay NDE information in an objective manner and instead exaggerate it enormously, as we have seen in a number of threads here.

That makes sense to me; as you say, it's a parapsychology/psychical research forum, not a religion/theology forum. In this case both @Sciborg_S_Patel and @sbu made relevant points that I thought should be addressed, however. Also I tried to avoid turning it into a "why my religious views are correct" post. Rather, I attempted to explain the kinds of arguments made in favor of my views that I take seriously and why, without evaluating the arguments themselves.

Thanks and also to @Sciborg_S_Patel. I wasn't intending to target just one individual, I know there are a number of people posting in this thread. I suppose the problem from my point of view is that I've reached some very simple conclusions about those ancient texts, but my conclusions are almost certainly not the same as yours. That in itself isn't a problem - I don't claim to be correct. But it does mean that area legitimately covers much more ground than perhaps it might appear at first glance. I suppose my opinion is that it muddies the waters rather than clarifying them.

Anyway I think we're all content. It's ok of course to mention those topics, I don't think it's off-limits, because spirituality is part of what we cover on this forum - and perhaps a major factor in the interest in NDEs as compared with say psychokinesis.