This is Part II of this series of posts. Part I exposes the flaws in an article in Esquire that incorrectly called into question the validity of the near-death experience reported by Dr. Eben Alexander in his book Heaven Is Real: A Doctor’s Experience With the Afterlife.
There are many independent forms of empirical evidence for the afterlife and ESP. Unfortuantely, there are also many cases of pseudoskeptics misleading the public about this evidence as I have documented on my web page on Skeptical Misdirection. The evidence for the afterlife and ESP is so strong that pseudoskeptics have to resort to misleading tactics in their efforts to discredit it.
There have been a number of stories in the news about recent research showing an "electrical surge" in the brains of rats in the first 30 seconds after they experience cardiac arrest. It has been incorrectly claimed that a similar phenomenon could be the cause of near-death experiences in humans. A surge of electrical activity has been known to occur in brains of humans close to the moment of death as well as in humans experiencing cardiac arrest, so this story about rats is not anything new. (The preceeding two links include their own refutation of the "electrical surge" explanation for near-death experiences and are well worth looking at.) There are several reasons a surge of electrical activity in the brain cannot account for near-death experiences. A surge of electrical activity cannot explain:
- Veridical (verifiable) near-death experiencess where the experiencer is aware of what is happening at a location he could not perceive with his normal senses even if he was conscious.
- Shared near-death experiences where more than one person is close to death and they share the same near-death experience.
- Shared near-death experiences where one person is close to death and one or more people around him share his near-death experience.
- Near-death experiences that occur when the experiencer is not suffering cardiac arrest and is not physiologically close to death.
- Near-death experiences where the subject experiences cardiac arrest for much longer than the surge of electrical activity lasts and the experiencer can report veridical information long after the surge of electrical activity ends.
- Near-death experiences that occur when it is known that the experiencer's EEG shows no brain activity.
Also see: All of the materialist explanations for near-death experiences fail to explain the phenomenon.
Examples and References
- Veridical near-death experiencess where the experiencer is aware of what is happening at a location he could not perceive with his normal senses even if he was conscious.
While Maria's body was being worked on by the medical staff she experienced leaving her body. She floated upwards some 4 stories and came out onto the roof of the hospital. There on the ledge of the roof she saw an old sneaker with a worn little toe and one lace tucked under the heel. When the resuscitation procedure had proved successful Maria came to and was quite preoccupied with her vision of the sneaker. ... She managed to persuade the social worker Kim Clark to go check and directed her to a window from which the shoe could be seen when leaning out. ... Clark easily found the correct window and there, indeed, lay the sneaker on the ledge with the worn little toe and the lace tucked under the heel just as Maria had described it.
(Because this case is well known, many false claims have been made by pseudoskeptics in attempts to debunk this case. None of the attempts stand up to close scrutiny.)
- Shared near-death experiences where more than one person is close to death and they share the same near-death experience.
near-death.com
We saw that the sparkling lights were tiny, transparent bubbles that drifted in the air and sparkled on the grass. We realized that each tiny sparkle was a soul. To me, the valley appeared to be Heaven, but at the same time I knew that James and Rashad were seeing it differently. James saw it as the Gulf of Souls. Rashad saw it as Nirvana, and somehow we knew all this without speaking. The light began gathering at the far end of the valley, and slowly, out of the mist, a pure white being began to materialize. I saw an angel with a strong, bright face, but not like you'd usually imagine. She was closer to a strong, Viking Valkyrie. I knew she was the special angel that watches over the women of my family, and I perceived her name to be Hellena. James saw this same being as his late father, a career Naval officer, in a white dress uniform. Rashad perceived the being to be the Enlightened One, or Buddha.
- Shared near-death experiences where one person is close to death and one or more people around him share his near-death experience.
See the example below.
- Near-death experiences that occur when the experiencer is not suffering cardiac arrest and is not physiologically close to death.
Then I saw this incredible white spinning light appear on his left shoulder as he was falling over toward me in his chair. I thought, "My God! I can see his soul leaving his body! Maybe it was an angel who had come for him!"
In any event, the light was so beautiful and lovely, that I stood up without thinking and thought, "Take me! I'll go and he can stay!" I so desperately wanted to go into that light and be with it. Suddenly, I was having a NDE with Phillip in a space that I can only describe as heaven. It was simply a pure whiteness of light just like in the movies. No visuals at all. Just white light everywhere.
Then, I was back in my body. Phillip sat straight up and was back in his body. He was muttering that he guessed he just couldn't die.
- Near-death experiences where the subject experiences cardiac arrest for much longer than the surge of electrical activity lasts and the experiencer can report veridical information long after the surge of electrical activity ends.
Cosmological Implications of Near-Death Experiences by Bruce Greyson Journal of Cosmology, 2011, Vol. 14.
However, unconsciousness produced by cardiac arrest characteristically leaves patients amnesic and confused for events immediately preceding and following these episodes (Aminoff et al., 1988; Parnia & Fenwick, 2002; van Lommel et al., 2001). Furthermore, a substantial number of NDEs contain apparent time "anchors" in the form of verifiable reports of events occurring during the period of insult itself. For example, a cardiac-arrest victim described by van Lommel et al. (2001) had been discovered lying in a meadow 30 minutes or more prior to his arrival at the emergency room, comatose and cyanotic, and yet days later, having recovered, he was able to describe accurately various circumstances occurring in conjunction with the ensuing resuscitation procedures in the hospital.
- Near-death experiences that occur when it is known that the experiencer's EEG shows no brain activity.
Pam Reynolds Near-death experience at near-death.com
This operation, nicknamed "standstill" by the doctors who perform it, required that Pam's body temperature be lowered to 60 degrees, her heartbeat and breathing stopped, her brain waves flattened, and the blood drained from her head. In everyday terms, she was put to death. After removing the aneurysm, she was restored to life. During the time that Pam was in standstill, she experienced a NDE. Her remarkably detailed veridical out-of-body observations during her surgery were later verified to be very accurate. This case is considered to be one of the strongest cases of veridical evidence in NDE research because of her ability to describe the unique surgical instruments and procedures used and her ability to describe in detail these events while she was clinically and brain dead.
(Because this case is well known, many false claims have been made by pseudoskeptics in attempts to debunk this case. None of the attempts stand up to close scrutiny.)
...
When all of Pam's vital signs were stopped, the doctor turned on a surgical saw and began to cut through Pam's skull. While this was going on, Pam reported that she felt herself "pop" outside her body and hover above the operating table. Then she watched the doctors working on her lifeless body for awhile. From her out-of-body position, she observed the doctor sawing into her skull with what looked to her like an electric toothbrush. Pam heard and reported later what the nurses in the operating room had said and exactly what was happening during the operation. At this time, every monitor attached to Pam's body registered "no life" whatsoever. At some point, Pam's consciousness floated out of the operating room and traveled down a tunnel which had a light at the end of it where her deceased relatives and friends were waiting including her long-dead grandmother. Pam's NDE ended when her deceased uncle led her back to her body for her to reentered it. Pam compared the feeling of reentering her dead body to "plunging into a pool of ice." The following is Pam Reynolds' account of her NDE in her own words.
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