“DCP” wrote:gemli: "You must keep in mind that "near death" is another way of saying "still alive.""
No. You must keep in mind that you don't know what you're talking about.
Like you, some ancient and medieval philosophers argued scientific questions from definitions, seeing little or no need for empirical evidence. But they were better at it than you are, and, anyway, that kind of reasoning is long since out of style for science.
gemli: "There is no evidence of the "other side" that is not a story perpetuated by believers."
You're simply too uninformed to have a meaningful opinion on this subject. And you've become, candidly, a repetitious and quite uninteresting bore.
There’s a palpable anxiety seeping out of DCP’s recent blog posts.
He’s clinging to decades old observational and anecdotal “evidence” for the reality of NDEs. And completely ignoring any criticism.
Perhaps DCP has been diagnosed with something, or is wrestling with the stark realization that his death is coming sooner rather than later?
I personally would be very anxious if I put my eternal salvation in the hands of a corporation masquerading as a religion.
Axil being civil....lol. He may not think so but he casted a lot of shade on Peterson's assertions to which he immediately did a Swedish rescue maneuver comparable to Batman’s utility belt. I don't have time.
Sorry. I can't put together even a cursory bibliography for you here in Sydney when I'm about to head out into the city and then catch a flight this evening.
It seems DCP has been working more on his NDE book, and quotes the following:
DCP's blog entry wrote:Critics of NDEs have often urged against me the fact that most people who come close to dying or who actually seem, temporarily, to be dead do not report having had an experience of extraordinary consciousness or extreme lucidity while in that state. But a substantial minority of such people do return with such reports And it’s true that we don’t know why some do and some don’t. But the fact seems to me very significant that, among people who have “died” more than once, some report NDEs on some occasions but not on others.
I think that I’ll go on to quote two more paragraphs from Dr. Holden’s letter to Mr. Pacino:
Dr. Holden’s letter to Mr. Pacino wrote:Most researchers who have studied NDEs and related experiences deeply have concluded that human consciousness is not a product of the brain and that it survives physical demise.
It's difficult to believe DCP takes this stuff seriously. It's one thing to believe in God and an afterlife, but quite another to think that there is real scientific evidence that consciousness exists without the brain. That is 1970's quackery, watching Uri Gellar and thinking "Ah there's the proof of the supernatural I've been looking for!"
Here's a great response to this absolute drooling nonsense that DCP keeps picking at:
“When you have an NDE, you must have a functioning brain to store the memory, and you have to survive with an intact brain so you can retrieve that memory and tell about it,” Kondziella says. “You can’t do that without a functioning brain, so all those arguments that NDEs prove that there’s consciousness outside the brain are simply nonsense.”
My understanding is that Peterson is putting forward near-death experiences as a "proof" of life after death. But here's the thing - if you're not actually dead, only near-death, how can an experience be proof of an afterlife? I see a distinction between those who are near-death, and those who technically "die" but who are resuscitated. If you die and are resuscitated, have you technically been resurrected? If not, what's the difference? If you die but are resuscitated, have you manipulated the natural order of things in the same way that suicide manipulates the natural order of things?
We researchers haven’t yet found a difference between people who do or who-like you-don’t report an NDE following what seem to be identical physical medical crises. Because you don’t remember anything from your cardiac arrest, it makes sense that you would conclude that nothing exists beyond this life. However, among people who have had multiple close brushes with death due to a serious chronic medical condition or to just being unlucky, they sometimes report an NDE and other times do not. For this reason, one can’t conclude from one experience that consciousness does not continue after physical demise. Be prepared for the possibility of a very different experience the next time you come close to death!
Inconsistency of near-death memories means you cannot conclude that consciousness does not continue after death? Memory is unreliable. There are many many studies that objectively demonstrate that we humans cannot trust our own memory of events. That's before you add in trauma and medication. There is currently zero evidence that consciousness continues after death. None. How do researchers differentiate between a near-death experience and a dream?
“NDEs are obviously quite difficult to study under controlled conditions,” Lindsay noted. “We can’t deliberately induce NDEs, they tend happen spontaneously and it’s impossible to predict when one will occur. We are therefore typically reliant on retrospective self-reporting which can introduce issues such as social desirability, self-enhancement or memory biases.”
“Although most people who have NDEs claim that psychophysical changes only occur after the NDE, we can’t be certain about causal direction. It may be that a specific neurological or personality configuration may increase the likelihood of experiencing NDEs as well as other unusual conscious states such as lucid dreaming, out-of-body experiences and precognitive dreams, rather the NDE actually causing these exceptional dream experiences.”
Premise 1. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.
Premise 2. The best evidence for the Book of Mormon is eyewitness testimony.
Conclusion. Therefore, the best evidence for the Book of Mormon is notoriously unreliable.
I'm not surprised if "most researchers" who have studied NDEs have been convinced that they were evidence of life after death. Anyone can qualify as a "researcher," and this is a subject which disproportionally attracts people who really want to find evidence for an afterlife.
And if anyone brushes off criticism by telling you that you are just ignorant of the ample literature on their subject, without actually mentioning any examples of convincing evidence from that literature, that's pretty much instant proof that there is no really convincing evidence or argument anywhere in all of the literature. If there were, then this person would be only too eager to trot out the best bit of that evidence for you, putting it right in your face in the clearest possible terms. So from the fact that what they do instead of that is to bluster vaguely about all their vast literature, you can immediately conclude that all of their stuff is just a big house of straw with nothing substantial at all.
By brushing you off by condemning your ignorance, without citing even one item of evidence, this person is really telling you that there is not even one single thing, in everything that they know, that they themselves think would impress you. This tells you all that you need to know about the subject.
I’m rather embarrassed for Dr. Holden, who has a Doctor of Education degree in Counselor Education and served 31 years on the University of North Texas (UNT) Counseling Program faculty. Why, precisely, did Dr. Holden take the time and energy to write and mail a letter to Al Pacino and then compound the unforced error by publishing it (albeit it in Vital Signs 43/4 (2024), the current issue of the newsletter of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS))? (I wonder if Brother Martin Tanner, Esq., vice-president of IANDS and member of the Interpreter Foundation’s board of editors and producer of the Interpreter Radio Show, had a hand in drafting the epistle.)
I’d love to know if Mr. Pacino ever saw the letter and if his publicist attached a witty or sardonic note in forwarding it. Dr. Holden writes: “Be prepared for the possibility of a very different experience the next time you come close to death!” I can only assume that Mr. Pacino is now getting his affairs in order to prepare for this exact possibility.
“But if you are told by your leader to do a thing, do it. None of your business whether it is right or wrong.” Heber C. Kimball, 8 Nov. 1857
NDE apologists have an easy task. Convincing evidence that we outlive our death and don’t just become nothing? That would be miraculously wonderful news! I don’t want to die, most people don’t want to die. Bring on the evidence of the afterlife please!
But this also ties in to apologists arguments for divine hiddenness. If the evidence for NDE was too good, then it would be too much proof of God and no one could fail the test and go to hell.
So NDE research has to be sloppy, shoddy, and inconclusive by definition. It’s a great catch-22 when you’re researching something that most likely doesn’t exist. You can just claim the lack of good evidence is by design.
