Succinct yet exhaustive list of arguments for NDEs as evidence for life after death

[Ninshub]

I'm not sure this would fit this list. But something remarkable that sometimes occurs is some NDErs report having experienced something that lasted a very, very long time (years even), but in reality they were out minutes. That's a bit stretching it isn't it? I mean I'm sure a lot happens in dreams that occurs in a brief time. But to have years of experience, condensed in a few minutes or whatever? Doesn't make sense if this was a hallucination.

[Laird]

A while back, I bookmarked a couple of posts by @Wormwood on the Skeptiko Forums, which nicely summarise some of the proponent evidence/arguments. They're essentially the same post with minor edits:

https://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/e...ost-121499

https://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/s...ost-121650

Hopefully, Wormwood doesn't mind me quoting the second post in full (with dead videos elided because I can't access them):

I’ll copy and paste a post of mine on an NDE page from Facebook.

How can we know that NDE's are not hallucinations? Several reasons. I want to outline a handful, but there are more than the ones which I will be listing.

1) Shared Death Experiences

These are experienced by people who are completely healthy who just so happen to be near somebody who is dying.



2) The Blind seeing for the first time during NDE's, and the deaf hearing for the first time. There are several reports and testimonies of this.

[Dead video]

3) Veridical NDE's

People floating outside their bodies (often to other rooms) to report conversations and events which later check out as accurate. There are a great deal of these on record

[Dead video]

4) These events are life altering. People change permanently. They report a non-existence of time. Those are two (there are many more) rather bizarrely common reportedly themes of NDE's. This doesnt fit the notion that they are Hallucinations, which are disorganized and bizarre and rarely make sense, and generally have no typical after effects. In contrast, NDE's are reported as being more real and clear than everyday real life, and that they make every day existence seem like a mere dream. This is nothing like a hallucination or dream.

5) People very frequently encounter dead people during their NDE's. Notice, they're not meeting living people. Strange coincidence if its a dream that all the people they run into just so happen to be dead isn't it? And why are people hallucinating something which is like what we would think the afterlife would be? Why are there profound and intelligent moral lessons which are learned? Why this undescribable state of love expressed during these experiences? Sounds a lot like what we would expect an afterlife to be based upon the religious writings of the wise man, sages, holy men, and shaman of the past.

6) There are a lot of reports of people given information about the future, which eventually came true

[Dead video]

[Dead video]

7) Miraculous healings which people were told would occur during their NDE's, and actually occur

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPmtfW3BIGs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X7b5pc-20k&t=219s

[Ninshub]

Just jotting down notes here for the future...

Experiencers see colors they've never seen before.

Reality is experienced as more real than what is normally experienced.

This is the list of the 9 different categories of veridical evidence derived from NDEs, developed for the well known book, Rivas, Titus, The Self Does Not Die: Verified Paranormal Phenomena from Near-Death Experiences. International Association for Near-Death Studies. Kindle Edition.

These categories of NDE-related phenomena are most of those that have been used to constitute direct veridical empirical evidence strongly pointing to the NDE being the precursor state, usually of the initial separation of spirit from the body/brain, prior to final physical death. Of course in the case of NDEs temporary but strongly bearing on the evident subsequent survival of the human personality of actual physical death. Some of these phenomena, such as miraculous healing, exhibition of paranormal abilities, and remote shared-death experiences, are indirect evidence for the nonlocality of human consciousness, which also bear strongly on the likelihood of survival.

Though necessarily rather lengthy for a post, this is just a small fraction of the detailed material in the book, and gives an indication of the true complexity of the evidential array accumulated to date.

1. Extrasensory Veridical Perception of the Immediate Environment
2. Extrasensory Veridical Perception of Events Beyond the Reach of the Physical Senses
3. Awareness and Extrasensory Veridical Perception During Cardiac Arrest and Other Conditions Seemingly Incompatible With
Consciousness
4. Telepathy
5. After-Death Communication With Strangers
6. After-Death Communication With Familiar People
7. Observations of Out-of-Body NDErs by Others
8. Miraculous Healing
9. Paranormal Abilities After NDEs

Evidential factors relevant to 1 and 2: Examples of good cases from the evidential standpoint of the no. 1 and no. 2 kind:

Category 1. Extrasensory Veridical Perception of the Immediate Environment

  Cases Reported by Third Parties Without a Direct Statement From the Patient to the Investigator
  Case Reported by the Patient Without Confirmation From a Specific Witness, but Confirmed by the Content of a Medical Report
 
  Cases Reported by the Patient and Confirmed by Witnesses

  Example: CASE 1.5. A Surgeon Taking Flight?    In New England, van driver Al Sullivan underwent an emergency operation at age 56 at the Hartford Hospital in Connecticut. He    was having heart arrhythmias at work, and when he was examined at the hospital, one of his coronary arteries became blocked, requiring him to undergo immediate surgery.      During the operation, he felt himself leaving his body. He had the feeling of rising up and, in doing so, seemed completely surrounded by a kind of thick, black smoke, until    he finally rose to a kind of amphitheater that he was unable to enter. There was a wall between him and the theater, and behind it a particularly bright light was shining.    He managed to hold on to the wall and to look over it. To his surprise, he saw his body in the lower left, lying on a table and covered by light-blue sheets. He also saw how    he had been cut open to expose his chest cavity. He saw his heart and also his surgeon, who had explained to him prior to the operation what he was going to do. This surgeon    looked a little perplexed. It even seemed like he was “flapping” his arms as if trying to fly.

Then Sullivan moved beyond the material, physical realm in what is called the transmaterial aspect of his NDE, in which he saw deceased loved ones (among them his mother, who had died young) and a glorious, yellow light, all the while experiencing overwhelming feelings of warmth, joy, love, and peace.

MOMENT OF DEATH

Finally, Sullivan was resuscitated.

As soon as he was able to speak again, he shared the experiences he had had during the operation with his cardiologist, Anthony LaSala. The latter attempted to ascribe the experiences to the medication, however. It was only when Sullivan described how the heart surgeon, Hiroyoshi Takata, had flapped his elbows as if he were trying to fly that Dr. LaSala’s attitude changed. He wondered who could have told Sullivan about this, considering it was in fact a personal habit of Takata’s. When Dr. Takata was not operating, he wanted to avoid contaminating his hands, so he would lay his palms flat on his chest and direct his assistants by pointing with his elbows. According to Sullivan, LaSala told Takata what Sullivan had observed during the NDE, but Takata, rather than focusing on the perceptual anomaly, took the information as personal criticism of the quality of his surgical care of Sullivan. Takata said, “Well, you’re here, you’re alive, so I must do something right!” His defensive response raises the question of how many veridical accounts may have been overlooked or hidden as a result of surgeons’ concerns about professional competency or legal liability. In the fall of 1997, investigator and psychiatrist Bruce Greyson interviewed both LaSala and Takata. Takata could not specifically confirm that he had “flapped” his elbows during the operation on Mr. Sullivan, but he did acknowledge that this was a general habit with him.

The habit stemmed from the desire not to touch anything with his sterile hands as he carried out an operation. LaSala confirmed that Sullivan had spoken with him shortly after the operation about his NDE. He also confirmed that Takata does have the strange habit of “flapping” his elbows, adding that he never saw any other surgeons do anything like that. In a video reenactment of this case, Sullivan’s eyes were taped shut, and there was a sterile drape over his head that blocked any possible physical perception of Takata. These conditions were explicitly confirmed by LaSala who said (2:47), “Even if he was conscious, it would be impossible for Al to see Dr. Takata’s stance or arm movement because Al is behind a drape that blocks the vision of the patient and his eyes were taped shut.” Assuming that pointing with one’s elbows does not produce sounds discernable in the bustle and equipment-related noise of an operating room, Sullivan’s perception could not be attributed to hearing. In addition, an investigative team consisting of psychologist Emily Cook and psychiatrists Bruce Greyson and Ian Stevenson also determined that Sullivan had most likely really been unconscious and under total anesthesia at the moment Takata had flapped his arms. They drew their conclusion from Sullivan’s own report of his NDE. Sullivan specifically claimed that Takata exhibited the behavior while he was the only one standing near Sullivan’s opened chest, which was being held open by metal clamps, while two other surgeons were busy on Sullivan’s leg. This last observation made Sullivan wonder during the NDE itself because he did not understand the connection between a leg and the heart operation. Only later did he learn that a leg vein is often used for bypass procedures during heart surgery.

Even though Takata’s strange behavioral pattern took place in the operating room itself, the investigators could not imagine how the totally anesthetized and unconscious Sullivan could ever have observed the pattern with his normal physical senses.

    And an examination and analysis indicating that specific descriptions of resuscitation procedures cannot be explained by factors like prior knowledge:

         

"Perceptions during NDEs of specific correct details about doctors or nurses involved in a resuscitation procedure usually provide enough evidence to justify the                conclusion that those perceptions cannot be attributed to chance hits or prior knowledge. Both cardiologist Michael Sabom and medical investigator and PhD-level                nurse Penny Sartori have examined more generally whether NDErs’ descriptions of resuscitation procedures are, on average, more correct than the descriptions of                  cardiac patients who have not had NDEs. If NDErs’ accounts were not more correct, it would follow that their perceptions were the result of chance or prior                      knowledge. As material for comparison, Sabom used a group of cardiac patients not reporting NDEs who had never been resuscitated. For her investigation, Sartori used            a group of patients who had likewise never reported an NDE but had been resuscitated. Despite the difference in comparison groups, both investigators determined that            the NDErs’ descriptions were markedly more correct and believable than those of the comparison groups. For example, the NDErs reported many more accurate details,              and the comparison groups of patients without near-death experiences made greater errors in their descriptions. These latter patients did not know, for instance, on
          which parts of the body the electrical “pads” (small, self-adhering cushions) or “paddles” (metal disks) of a defibrillator were placed, or they thought that an                electric shock was a standard component of the procedure. Some patients from the comparison groups had no idea about resuscitation procedures at all, and others had            a distorted notion that was based on popular TV shows. Both investigators concluded from their studies that normal factors like prior knowledge, guesswork, or pure              coincidence do not offer an acceptable explanation for correct extrasensory perceptions of resuscitation procedures. In her blog of October 5, 2011, Sartori wrote:              “Anomalous well documented cases like this cannot be explained by current scientific explanations.”

Category 2. Extrasensory Veridical Perception of Events Beyond the Reach of the Physical Senses

  Cases Reported by Third Parties Without a Direct Statement From the Patient to the Investigator
 
  Cases Reported by the Patient and Confirmed by an Investigator or Others Involved

 

Example: CASE 2.6. The 1985 Quarter    Physician John Lerma worked for 10 years at the renowned Texas Medical Center Hospice at The Medical Center of Houston, Texas, and      has written about visions that the dying may have. In his book Into the Light, Lerma highlighted the following case, which was instrumental in his decision to pursue a      career as a hospice physician. At the time of this case, Dr. Lerma was working as an intern at a hospital in San Antonio, Texas. One night, several patients were brought to    the hospital for emergency treatment, including Ricardo, aged 82, a man who had collapsed while eating dinner. Lerma tried to resuscitate this patient directly. After the      first electrical shock, the patient’s heart rhythm appeared to restore itself. Ricardo slowly awoke and mumbled something about “the light” and about an OBE. He also made a    comparison with a roller coaster. Ricardo was still bothered by chest pain, so in order to distract him, Lerma asked the patient to tell him more about the roller coaster.      Ricardo then described a classic, beautiful NDE, including meeting angels who told him that he would survive. After this short conversation, the patient had another cardiac    arrest. The team tried to resuscitate him again by means of a shock, but that did not work this time. Only when Lerma delivered an epinephrine injection into the patient’s      heart was heart rhythm restored. On the cardiac ward, cardiologists tried to stabilize his heart rate and rhythm. Finally, it was determined that Ricardo had undergone a        major infarction, and his heart subsequently responded well to various medical treatments. The next day, Lerma went to see the new patients and saw Ricardo waving at him and    motioning that the doctor should come see him first. He thanked Dr. Lerma for his efforts and also referred to the conversation about the near-death experience. Ricardo told    Lerma the kinds of life lessons he had retained from the NDE. Lastly, he asked the intern to help him to prove that his experience had been more than a kind of dream. The      patient said: When I was out of my body and floating up above the trauma room I spotted a 1985 quarter lying on the right-hand corner of the 8-foot-high cardiac monitor. It    was amidst the dust as if someone had put it there for this very reason. Dr. Lerma, could you please check for me? It would mean so much to me. Subsequently, Lerma took a      ladder to the ER. He climbed up the ladder, in the presence of nurses. Lerma wrote, “To our total amazement, there it was, just as he had seen it, and even the year was        right: 1985.” He argued that there appeared to be only two possible explanations for the correct description of the quarter: Ricardo had placed the quarter there himself, or    he was able to truly see the coin in his out-of-body state. He mentioned that Ricardo, from a medical point of view, had not been in any condition to climb a ladder for        years. Lerma also could not establish a link with anyone who worked in the ER.