To NDE or not to NDE (re-done)

Yes, of course, considering the OP's question.

Everybody's experiences which don’t meet Greyson's arbitrary NDE criteria get sidelined, both personally, and in relevant research - which is therefore necessarily biased, particularly where it compares the Greyson sub-group with the overall pool of experiences available.

Take the distressing type experience I mentioned earlier as an example. There are plenty of people who will still say things like... if these distressing experiences had only lasted longer, they would have eventually turned into the 'positive' Greyson type experience, you know... it's just that these NDE's were interrupted before they got to the good bit.

That's why Nancy wrote "Dancing Past the Dark", because these distressing NDE's have been pushed aside. It's another reason, for instance, why say Penny doesn't believe NDE imagery is a glimpse of the afterlife. And neither do I.

There are a massive range of Near Death Experiences, ranging from the repelling-type... all the way through to the highly attractive-type experience.

Personally speaking, I think it does matter... because it takes research down the wrong path.

I understand what you're saying, but I don't agree with the "negative" NDE part and how it says anything against them being glimpses of the afterlife? How does their existence hamper the idea? 

There are a number of NDE researchers who acknowledge negative experiences and plenty of NDErs who were revealed to the "darker" side of reality that some of these distressing experiences may reflect on. Amongst the actual experiencer community, they welcome people with negative experiences and help the ones who don't fully understand them. 

It just doesn't defeat the idea of an afterlife to me. Simple as that. A bias amongst some researchers is a different thing, but in studies that have included negative experiences still all say they are in the minority. They exist but are far from equal in number to positive experiences

Yes, of course, considering the OP's question.

Everybody's experiences which don’t meet Greyson's arbitrary NDE criteria get sidelined, both personally, and in relevant research - which is therefore necessarily biased, particularly where it compares the Greyson sub-group with the overall pool of experiences available.

Take the distressing type experience I mentioned earlier as an example. There are plenty of people who will still say things like... if these distressing experiences had only lasted longer, they would have eventually turned into the 'positive' Greyson type experience, you know... it's just that these NDE's were interrupted before they got to the good bit.

That's why Nancy wrote "Dancing Past the Dark", because these distressing NDE's have been pushed aside. It's another reason, for instance, why say Penny doesn't believe NDE imagery is a glimpse of the afterlife. And neither do I.

There are a massive range of Near Death Experiences, ranging from the repelling-type... all the way through to the highly attractive-type experience.

Personally speaking, I think it does matter... because it takes research down the wrong path.

"Everybody's experiences which don’t meet Greyson's arbitrary NDE criteria get sidelined, both personally, and in relevant research -"

The main and most important research is not concerned with analysing the subjective experience as a whole (although that is important)..it's focussed on the one element that can finally settle the debate, namely the out of body experience. That's where the work is, that's the most important feature of the NDE (for science anyway) and the only one that is testable. That is the one component that can (possibly) change the world for ever, make it necessary to re-write the text books.

Now, I honestly don't understand why you say you are so concerned about the content of people's near death experiences being ignored by users of the Greyson scale. YOU don't even accept the reports at face value, you don't believe that something is leaving the body. You argue for some kind of linking of people's brains, so I would say quite fairly, what does it matter to you ? Ultimately it doesn't mean anything if your model is correct because after the brain dies that's the end.

And are you really telling us that NDErs are happy as long as their subjective experience is fully accepted but not that their soul left their body/brain ? Of course not but that's what you're proposing. 

"There are a massive range of Near Death Experiences, ranging from the repelling-type... all the way through to the highly attractive-type experience."

You're putting too much emphasis on the negative reports. What can we do about them ? It's quite obvious that they seem to have little or nothing to do with the character of the person, or if they are religious or not, or not spiritual enough, or not "good" enough etc and so on. And finally once again, why does it matter if when you're dead, you're dead.

No I don't think you're being scientific if you're going to handwave a scale allegedly designed to be scientific but then praise Parnia for "tightening up the methodology" as I believe you put it. I've seen you get into arguments with Steve001 and Linda over this, stating that it's a matter of fact that the survival of consciousness research Parnia is doing will/could settle the question once and for all. Hell you ripped on Linda earlier in this thread for it.

A biased scale gives biased results and thus anyone who uses it should not/will not be taken seriously. Acting like this isn't a big deal devalues the work of people actually trying to make this mainstream science because it shows the mainstreamn exactly the stereotype they critisize "oh look at these spiritualists, they don't care if their scale is biased, they don't care that the methods are faulty, they just care that it feels good. Guess there's nothing important they have to say after all." Something that I thought you cared about.

You don't seem to understand what is really important and what is not. The subjective elements of a near death experience cannot be objectively measured or tested EVER. The one exception is the out of body experience. The important question is not how many elements of the Greyson NDE scale, the person encountered, the question is, can consciousness occur separate from the brain. 

And if it can, what does that tell us ...in other words, do we have a soul, something that survives the death of the body. Because if we do (and I believe we do) it has massive importance for how we choose to live our lives.

Of lesser importance (just in my opinion) is dissecting the subjective reports. The Greyson scale is what it is, I don't see the big deal if it's not quite perfect. So what ?

I understand what you're saying, but I don't agree with the "negative" NDE part and how it says anything against them being glimpses of the afterlife? How does their existence hamper the idea? 

There are a number of NDE researchers who acknowledge negative experiences and plenty of NDErs who were revealed to the "darker" side of reality that some of these distressing experiences may reflect on. Amongst the actual experiencer community, they welcome people with negative experiences and help the ones who don't fully understand them. 

It just doesn't defeat the idea of an afterlife to me. Simple as that. A bias amongst some researchers is a different thing, but in studies that have included negative experiences still all say they are in the minority. They exist but are far from equal in number to positive experiences

If you are talking about all the experiences people have when they are near death, it's difficult to say that they are glimpses of the afterlife because so few of them contain elements which are related to our preconceptions of what "the afterlife" consists of. For example, what is the distressing experience of the nurses and doctors as nazis subjecting the patient to medical experiments meant to be telling us about the afterlife? Even among the people whose experiences are labelled "NDE" based on reaching the cutoff on the Greyson scale, there is very little in the descriptions which could be taken as a glimpse into the afterlife. Most of these experiences aren't like the stories on the IANDS site, but rather reach the cutoff because there was a sense of peace, a time distortion, and some life review scenes, none of which relates to an afterlife. Even visits from people who weren't there in real life don't really tell us much about the afterlife, because subjects describe visits from a wide variety of people - alive, dead, strangers, celebrities, mundane, meaningful, etc. If seeing your dead aunt is supposed to be a glimpse of the afterlife, what is being visited by the local grocery store clerk meant to be telling us?

Picking out some of the stories post hoc because they fit our preconceptions as to a spiritual realm may just be telling us more about our preconceptions than it does about an actual place (using the term "place" loosely).

Linda

This to-and-fro about scientific proof of the NDE is, to my mind, pretty pointless. While it is encouraging to have some scientists on board with the concept of an afterlife, I don't believe that science can tell us too much about it. Science demands objective observation and precise repeatability, neither of which you are going to get from an NDE.There may be some significant similarities but the experience is essentially subjective and personal. 

Whether a person is met by Auntie Iris or Jesus is a subjective and personal thing dependent on deeply held beliefs and expectations which determine how such a meeting is interpreted by the personality having the experience. Science can add some clarity to the condition of the physical body at the time of the experience. It can say that these profound experiences happened at a time when, by any scientific measure, no mental experiences should have been taking place. But it can't pronounce on the subjective nature of these experiences. 

Witnesses can also confirm the veridical aspects of the experience - such as out of body observations of things happening or conversations taking place while the subject was immobilised and - by measurable criteria - unconscious. Science doesn't have a theory to accommodate such observations so sceptics will always attempt to fudge one.

The NDE constitutes very important evidence in favour of the afterlife but it is one of many in the entire canon of evidence going back to pre-history. There are accounts in the Tibetan and Egyptian Books of the Dead which correspond closely to modern NDE accounts. There's evidence from mediums. There are anomalous personal experiences in probably every family on earth describing encounters with the dead. There's a wealth of evidence for reincarnation not least of which was the series of meticulous studies done by Ian Stevenson. 

All of this evidence, if approached as individual cases, comprises of a story of a subjective experience with, perhaps, some aspects which might be considered objective and which science can investigate. But in reducing the whole experience to that which science can approach we lose the context and the essence. It becomes fodder for the nit-pickers and there will always be alternative explanations such as delusion, hallucination, coincidence or fraud. But for the skeptics to be right, every single one of those multitude of cases must be assumed to be due to one of those alternatives and that is a huge assumption which is based on an ideology, not science.

As for an afterlife. I don’t think these experiences tell us anything either for, or against there being an afterlife.

 
That doesn't seem to be the case for the people who have actually been dead and come back though, does it. They don't fear death anymore. Why is that ?

I don’t really understand the relevance of the points you seem to be making with regards to the OP’s question.

As best as I could understand you seemed to be saying something like...

1) my arguments abut the Greyson scale bias can be set aside...  because OBE’s matter more... and...
2) that [your misrepresentation of] my beliefs, means my arguments should be set aside because... somehow I am arguing in bad faith.

Or something like that...

I didn’t find either very compelling

You don't accept a very crucial element of what the NDErs report actually happened to them, in that you don't accept they were really out of their bodies. Therefore why bother arguing about a scale that contains the question  "were you out of your body" etc ...when you don't accept that. What's the point ?  

How can you say on the one hand that you're concerned that some of the reported elements are not being considered by Greyson's scale and then completely refuse to accept their word when they say they left their bodies ? It's a bit hypocritical, Max.

Without the acceptance of the reality of the out of body experience, the Greyson scale means nothing much.