This is a person who has spent years dealing with many people who have had NDEs. He wrote a recent book in which he claimed that he researched thousands of people, and that all of their experiences are totally similar. He also apparently debunked the whole idea that NDEs are a result of a lack of oxygen in the brain. According to him all the scientific explanations we have now for NDEs are not true. If you found out that a lack of oxygen was not the cause of NDEs would you believe them?
Subscription Note:
Choosing to subscribe to this topic will automatically register you for email notifications for comments and updates on this thread.
Email notifications will be sent out daily by default unless specified otherwise on your account which you can edit by going to your userpage here and clicking on the subscriptions tab.
Dr Jeffrey Long:
"In the New York Times bestselling book, Evidence of the Afterlife, radiation oncologist and Near Death Experience (NDE) expert Dr. Jeffrey Long gathered findings from the Near Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF) that pointed toward a strong scientific case that there is life after death. Dr. Long has continued his groundbreaking research and has collected the largest Near Death Experience study in history for God and the Afterlife. Once again, the findings overwhelmingly point to the existence of an afterlife, but this time Dr. Long has another startling scientific conclusion: that God exists, and there is amazing consistency in the reporting about what God is like."
So, he went looking for evidence of his god and an afterlife. And he found it... surprise, surprise.
"...a strong scientific case that there is life after death."
"...this time Dr. Long has another startling scientific conclusion: that God exists..."
It's called confirmation bias. He found the "evidence" for what he wanted to find. He even found proof that his god exists. He probably didn't do his "research" on non-Christians. He probably didn't base it on near death experiences of Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus or Sikhs. What do you think?
Why is his "ground breaking research" and "strong scientific case" not being peer reviewed?
Just because they sprinkle the the word "scientific" all over their texts, doesn't mean it was scientific in any way what so ever.
@The Pragmatic That is a very good answer! Thank you very much! I was also wondering, if it were proven that NDE were not hallucinations, would you still think that they are unreliable experiences?
That would depend entirely on what scenario the NDE's that where proven to not be hallucinations would be about.
As the first example, I'll use the only scenario that I can imagine (right now) where such a thing could be proven to an extent that it would be believable.
Lets say that they all the NDE's that could be proven to not be hallucinations contained "out of body experiences" where they could see what happened around them when they where dead. And they could remember and retell what happened accurately, perhaps compared to video footage.
I would not consider such NDE's to be unreliable experiences, if there there were many of them that could show a high degree of accuracy.
(How and why would still be unknown, though.)
If on the other hand these NDE's all contained fairy tails, abstract descriptions, or descriptions of a supernatural nature, even if they where all similar, they would still be very untrustworthy (a better word than unreliable in this case). But if that would be the case, it would be quite a challenge to prove that they where not hallucinations.
If a person is not hypoxic what makes them near death? I have some experience with this. If you have good oxygenation with deep tissue perfusion you are not near death. You are alive.
A common method that is used to test NDE's is the placement of secret images (such as a playing card, like the jack of diamonds) face up on the top of tall equipment in the rooms where patients are expected to be in this "near death" state. To my knowledge: no person describing a NDE has ever managed to identify one of these images; despite the fact that they describe their experiences as floating above the room looking down on it.
If this does not make you extremely skeptical of the claim that NDE are real world out of body experiences, nothing ever will.
"If you found out that a lack of oxygen was not the cause of NDEs would you believe them?". If this was proven, it still doesn't prove that there is an "afterlife". The truth of the matter is that NDEs are likely the result of many things (hypoxia, changing neurotransmitter levels in the brain, acidosis and preconceived expectations on the part of the patient, to name a few). There is absolutely no evidence supporting the claim that an "afterlife" exists.
I couldn't agree more with Sam here. I'd put it this way:
If the cause of something is unknown, is that evidence it is supernatural in origin?
I don't think so. I recently moved and in the middle of my new backyard I have a concrete pad (likely for RV parking). Every morning there is a shallow pool of what I think is water on that concrete pad. For the life of me I can't figure out where this water is coming from. Does anyone here think that this is evidence of a supernatural event (like say magical water pixies)? Of course not. Because water magically appearing on RV pads doesn't dove tail into anyone's religious beliefs; but if it was a statue of the "virgin Mary" I bet people would cite it as evidence of the supernatural!
Hey I just got an idea: maybe I should put a flying spaghetti monster statue there!
LoL, the weeping flying spaghetti monster. Come and see, only a fiver per person.
Can we park our RV there?
Does the water look anything like Jesus or Mother Terror of Calcutta?
No, the pool looks more like the state of South Carolina.
What do I think? I think it is a great topic for a book... but a big pile of dogshit otherwise