I could really use some help on this.

[Laird]

Ah the usual claims of not-so-near-death-experiences paralleling NDEs.

Yep, preceded by the (usual?) claim that there's no good evidence that any brain has ever been inactive during an NDE, and followed by the usual claim that NDEs are just the throes of a dying brain.

I feel like just looking at his two big points in this really make you feel how dated it is. The dying brain theory which, really isn't put forward by much of anyone anymore. I think the main ones nowdays are deep brain activity and during the death process, things happening outside of a certain order so you hallucinate, or made up after you've recovered consciousness. The last one of which is already on its way out due to the real time model and the others which have the old problems of shaky evidence and ignoring other evidence they don't like like veridical perception.

Also, the really hanging on to syncope/fainting angle, along with that little chart he's got there. Another thing that's always confused me, comparing the two, because I can go base jumping and go "It was scary, felt like I was falling, I felt like I was calm and time sort of slowed down as it happened" and all of those would also apply to being thrown off the side of a mountain. All you need to do is actually just read NDE reports to see how different they are, especially since in that syncope diagram he has someone might get one or two of those when fainting while in an NDE someone can possibly get all of them at once.

Just, an old bad paper, just skeptic posting not meant to convince anyone based on the evidence, just post it so the skeptics who read it can go "Mhm yes all solved" and pat each other on the back.

Well nevermind, I take back some of what I said, that syncope article he references seems extremely interesting, if only it didnt cost about 40 bucks to read. Though, just going off what Braithwaite says there's definitely questions that need to be asked.

Why do out of body experiences happen more in NDEs than when induced and what do they mean by visual perceptions? Are these the distorted OBEs we are familiar with from induced experiences where people have wonky limbs and cant see half their body? Were their eyes open when they were induced, or were they closed or even taped shut as in a number of NDE reports? Why is hearing voices so massively more significant in induced experiences than in NDEs? The feeling of peace can be familiar but is it the same as NDEs? It may have been because of an offhand mention later on in the paper but what does it mean when people say they were similar? Going back to my basejumping vs being thrown off of a mountain. Lights and tunnel experiences suffer from the same question of similarity. The fact that life reviews come in at 0 for syncope is suspicious but I'll throw them a bone, it seems to be culturally mandated. Entering another world is again, broad, alongside meeting preternatural beings. Were they entering a crazy DMT world, a stereotypical heaven, something distorted and whacky? And what beings did they meet? Dead family members? Talking jellyfish? Family members who they didnt know who told them to return? Did they hit a barrier where they couldnt go any further? And then, of course, knowledge of the future with another 0 for induced experiences.

To me this is the strongest part of the article and it still has flaws. Some of these might be cleared up by reading the actual publication, but to me it seems a bit like "If we take enough steps away and dont examine the close details, both of these events look the same.". So I think I'll remain skeptical, especially since that study came out 26 years ago and I havent seen it paraded around as the smoking gun by skeptics, the fact that the sheer bias of the article (It's called occams chainsaw, bloody hell) makes me wonder if he's actually reporting the study as is or cherrypicking for the bits that make his side look better, the fact the overall piece is old so misses out on solid new evidence like the real time model of NDEs or books like The Self Does Not Die and that he doesn't bring up any of the more difficult parts of NDEs to explain because why would he that doesn't fit his narrative.

But yeah, give him some credit, the study is certainly an interesting point. Does it save everything else? Not really. Also he comes off like a real condescending prick during the whole thing and I just don't like that. I've already got all the right answers unlike you silly superstitious paranormalists.

But yeah, give him some credit, the study is certainly an interesting point. Does it save everything else? Not really. Also he comes off like a real condescending prick during the whole thing and I just don't like that. I've already got all the right answers unlike you silly superstitious paranormalists.

From Kevin Nelson's skeptical book "The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain: A Neurologist's Search for God" Lambert induced tunnel vision, which isn't exactly like the sensation of going through a tunnel IMO. My guess is there is a liberal paralleling between the syncope experiences and those of an NDE for the other parts of that chart.

That said, AFAIK all the pieces of an NDE can be found in not-near-death-experiences of varied kinds, ranging from fear-of-death-experiences to non-induced unexpected instances of Psi to shamanic journeys. Even life reviews can happen in the latter, though not sure they're of the same nature.

But it's the combination of these things, in tandem with things like Peak in Darien cases and the parallel to some Life-between-lives memories in reincarnation cases which mark NDEs as potential indicators to what awaits people on the other side.

Now I don't know if anyone can settle the exact time of an NDE occurrence, because a skeptic can just insist it happened before or after the time the brain was "turned off". Even if one of Parnia's study subjects saw a target it wouldn't be enough.

As someone who really wants an afterlife,  this article is REALLY fucking me up.

What can possibly prove that there isn't one?  Did God himself write the article?

If there was only one source of evidence for an afterlife I can see that it could potentially easily be challenged (I don’t say overturned). There isn’t just one source though. There’s a vast array of evidence of many different types. I’m not saying that therefore it’s proved, but I don’t think it is possible to say that there definitely isn’t any afterlife, if one has studied even part of the body of evidence with an open mind.