Debate: That veridical NDEs are a myth [split: A splendid video about evolution]

I’m all for gathering more data. However, if this study is carried out and the results are negative, the NDE community will simply cry foul play.

Continuing refutation of 1.:

I can only infer that your claim that it's been shown to be a "myth" that brain activity rapidly "flatlines" (after what? I assume you mean cardiac arrest but strangely you don't specify this) is based on AWARE II. I don't see how you could say the study found this to be a "myth" when useable EEG data were only obtained for 53 of 567 patients, and of those 53, about half were found to have markedly depressed or absent EEG activity. More to the point, since the EEG readings were taken during resuscitation attempts, it isn't even clear if in the cases that EEG activity was found, it was due to brain activity or the attempts themselves.

In a 2025 paper in the journal International Review of Psychiatry, Angeli-Faez, Greyson, and van Lommel offer the following on AWARE-II:

"Several cortical patterns emerged on the frontal EEG in this study, ranging from the predominance of suppressed activity and seizures to slow-wave activity in the delta (1-4 Hz) and theta (4-8 Hz) bands (up to CPR 60 min) and alpha (8-13 Hz) (up to CPR 35 min) and beta (13-30 Hz) frequencies (Parnia et al., 2023). Researchers have interpreted these findings as ‘consistent with consciousness and a possible resumption of a network-level of cognitive and neuronal activity emerged up to 35–60 minutes into CPR’ (Parnia et al., 2023, p. 9; see also Parnia, 2024). However, their results are not consistent with neural signatures of consciousness during CPR; the EEG findings do not seem to represent consciousness, since none of these records were correlated with any recall of awareness in this study (Greyson & van Lommel, 2024). Despite the measures described to minimize CPR motion artifact on the EEG (Parnia, 2024; Parnia et al., 2023, p. 4), the data do not provide persuasive evidence that the EEG measures were separated from muscle contamination or CPR artifacts (Greyson & van Lommel, 2024). Further, in Figure 1a of this study, in the image referring to alpha activity (Parnia et al., 2023, p. 4), three (of a total of 4) electrodes show alpha rhythm, while one displays a flat trace, indicating suppressed activity. This association between suppressed activity and alpha waves reflects a malfunctioning of the cortex, associated with severe brain ischemia (mean rSO2 ~ 43%; baseline rSO2 ~ 70%), rather than a short EEG normalization arising during CPR. Given the long CPR duration (mean: 15.17 ± 12.55 min) in the absence of visible signs of consciousness (Parnia et al., 2023), and the vulnerability of alpha cortical power to impairments in oxygen delivery, it seems unlikely that this cortical activity indicated a restoration of waking consciousness."

It remains the case that the preponderance of evidence strongly favors the view that what mainstream neuroscientific theories hold to be the brain-level conditions for consciousness are rapidly lost in cardiac arrest.

2. "Compare this to the countless cardiac arrests that occur in hospitals worldwide where no veridical elements emerge, despite researchers actively looking for them." 

What are you talking about? How often do researchers have access to the details of patient case histories, which are generally locked away behind privacy law protections and so on? The overwhelming majority of cardiac arrest cases are dealt with as medical emergencies, not NDE research opportunities.

3. "The telling part is that NDE researchers have been promising controlled studies of veridical perception for decades, yet somehow these remarkable abilities never seem to manifest when proper experimental protocols are in place."

You repeatedly peddle this myth that no veridical NDE evidence has been obtained in prospective research. This is false. Penny Sartori, as I recall, got at least one case supplying such evidence in such a study. Moreover, you seem to forget (or not want to remember?) that AWARE-I did obtain evidence, even if not the evidence looked for (a target hit), of veridical OBE perception in an NDE. From a paper by philosopher Patrick Brissey, "Analysis of Recent Objections to the Traditional Near-Death Experience Argument for a Transphysical Self":

“one of Parnia et al.’s (2014) NDErs with accurate description of her resuscitation reported that she ‘blanked out’—that is, had a cardiac arrest—but claimed to have had continued consciousness while her brain was offline. She ‘remember[ed] vividly an automated voice saying, “Shock the patient,” “Shock the patient,”’ and then she observed a kind ‘woman’ beckoning her to travel to the corner of the hospital room (p. 5). The NDEr felt that she could not travel to the top of the room, but the woman’s warmth and persistence built confidence in the NDEr, and the next thing she knew she was observing the operation from the ceiling of the room along with the woman (p. 5). The NDEr testified, ‘I was up there, looking down at me, [1] the nurse, and [2] another man who had a bald head. . . I couldn’t see his face but I could see the back of his body. [3] He was quite a chunky fella. . . [4] He had blue scrubs on, and [5] he had a blue hat, but I could tell he didn’t have any hair, because of where the hat was.’ Then the NDEr woke up. Parnia et al. (2014) verified the NDEr’s claims as accurate. They wrote, ‘Post-script–Medical record review confirmed the use of the AED [automated external defibrillator], the medical team present during the cardiac arrest and the role the identified “man” played in responding to the cardiac arrest’ (p. 5). The authors of the study confirmed the NDEr’s observation of the defibrillation procedure and, essentially, the patient’s description of the ‘bald,’ ‘chunky fella’ wearing ‘blue scrubs’ and a ‘blue hat.’”

4. "The latter being a great example of empirical evidence sought under logical positivisme"

Not to offend, but this is a truly absurd statement. You're basically implying that all scientific inquiry is under the umbrella of logical positivism, when logical positivism has been understood to present a completely untenable account of the nature of science for many decades now, in the wake of the work of W.V.O. Quine and Pierre Duhem.

5. *critical remarks about the Gospels from Laird and sbu*

I recommend that both of you consider reading the following book, which is open access and so downloadable for free at the link, and which rather demolishes this notion of the Gospels as uncorroborated works lacking historicity: https://academic.oup.com/book/60034

6. "every piece of supposed 'otherworldly' debris has either disappeared, been revealed as mundane materials, or conveniently remains in the hands of people who won't submit it for independent analysis"

I'm not favorably inclined to UFO crash stories, which seem in virtually all cases to originate in government disinformation ops. But it's incorrect to claim that EVERY piece of alleged UFO debris has been satisfactorily explained away: https://journalofscientificexploration.o.../view/2415

7. "It's remarkably convenient that these 'alien crashes' always seem to happen near top-secret military installations during the height of experimental aircraft development. The U-2, stealth bombers, and classified weapons projects were being tested in these exact locations at these exact times. But sure, it must be aliens."

Setting aside crashed saucer tales, there are well-documented UFO cases from many different parts of the world. Cases such as this, which the massively skeptically biased Condon Committee judged "Unidentified" after thorough investigation, involving the observations of a Ph.D nuclear physicist, aren't being debunked by casually invoking proximity to military sites: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar...2125000247

Back to NDEs; I have to say it seems to me that the post from which the following points come was written by AI:

8. "why do veridical cases systematically disappear when we raise the evidentiary bar from anecdotal reports to rigorous investigation?"

They don't, you (or the AI?) just omit(s) the cases that don't fit your (its) favored perspective on this, as I observed above. It should be noted that the famous "dentures man" case fell into the pilot phase of a prospective NDE study.

9. "With today's ubiquitous surveillance systems, advanced medical monitoring, and meticulous documentation practices, we should be swimming in fresh, well-documented cases"

Again, where are all the studies being conducted on veridical NDEs and failing to get any evidence for them? Research on this matter has been very limited. The above is frankly one of the worst arguments you've brought out yet. "The world has become so science-y and technological! Science is in the air! The techno-science molecules should be collecting science-y evidence of veridical NDEs by themselves, but they aren't."

10. "Consciousness can persist during various phases of cardiac events."

I went over the problems implicit in this above.

11. "most self-reported NDEs occur in non-cardiac arrest settings entirely."

You don't provide any data to support this claim. The occurrence of NDE-like states in persons not near death doesn't have any bearing on whether accurate perceptions in genuine near-death conditions that should be, on the naturalist view, impossible really happen. You might as well say that because people can have perceptual experiences while not objectively near death, the prospective fact that they can have perceptual experiences while objectively near death would tell us nothing interesting if true. This looks like you're throwing every point vaguely related to the topic under discussion that comes into your mind at the wall, hoping something sticks.

12. "As an extra curiosity that should give any serious researcher pause: there are no known documented veridical NDE cases in Danish medical literature - ever."

I seriously doubt if you or anyone else has done the research necessary to be highly confident that this is really the case. Even if it were true, so what? Multiple possible explanations for such an anomaly come to mind. Think this through carefully: what exactly would that entail that would be genuinely problematic for the veridical NDE hypothesis? This reflects a style of paralogistic debunker argument that I've frequently encountered: unable to deal with the evidence we in fact have, the debunker insists on how strange it is we don't have the evidence he believes we should have, thinking (most irrationally) that this somehow nullifies the actually extant evidence.

Prof. Janice Miner Holden has reviewed the evidence for veridical perception during NDEs. Her chapter about this is in The handbook of near-death experiences: Thirty years of investigation. Her review does not seem to be freely available, but it is possible to read some of it through GoogleBooks.