Most good topics have an acronym, and this one is no exception. It seems that the Alexander case has reignited the NDE debate in a big way, with luminaries such as Sam Harris weighing in.



I'm a little troubled that it took the good doctor 4 years to go public with his story, a period during which he surely would have worked extensively on the ultimate public presentation. Esquire has a piece in their recent issue which also casts some serious doubt on the story.

That being said, there is too much in the literature to dismiss this subject out of hand. NDE's are have been detailed across religious, cultural, socioeconomic spectrums. The Alexander case offers a rather typical description, quite frankly, notwithstanding the fact that he's a neurosurgeon. The most striking thing (to me at least) is the transformative effect it often seems to have on these individuals.

Some view these experiences as proof that consciousness exists outside brain activity (count Dr. Alexander in this group).
Others view them as proof of an afterlife.
Still others view them as a form of lucid dreaming.
Lakhmir Chawla noted that a surge of electrical activity typically occurs in a dying brain after a period of decreasing activity.

Personally, I'm waiting for a peer-reviewed study in a reputable journal, which focuses on physiological events surrounding such experiences.

Aren't these just natural, psychedelic trips?

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It's a mystery. I'm not going to pass it off as some hallucinogenic trip, and I won't claim divine intervention. What I do know, based on the cases that I've read about, the people who have had them come out totally different people. Their attitude towards life and others changes dramatically for the better. So whatever they experienced obviously had a profound effect. To tell them that all they were doing was hallucinating would be an insult to them. I've backed up that doctor before on the old board, but yeah, that Esquire article has put me on the fence with him. You can't always trust people when money is involved.

I just want them to remake Flatliners.

I had a shunt failure a few years ago (for hydrocephalus) and spent however many weeks it was, in hospital, with selective amnesia and bat-shit crazy hallucinations until my body had adjusted to the new shunt in my head. It had a hugely profound effect on me, even a spiritual one, and yet I know that everything I saw can be explained medically. So I don't think it's an insult to suggest that hallucinating was 'all they were doing', because that denies the depth and complexity of hallucinations, and the fact that individuals' hallucinations can say a huge amount about their psyche, character, heart and lives as human beings. All of this stuff may or may not prove there is an afterlife (I don't discount that but I'm sceptical), but at the very least, it proves that we are more than science currently thinks we are.

I can get behind that. Tell that to science. In all times in its history, science has been shamelessly arrogant.

Haha, wow. Do you know what the scientific method is? Do you realize that it's entirely based on the search to disprove one's one hypotheses, and that it thrives on continually proving itself wrong? How is this any more arrogant than most religions' claim to be the sole possessors of the truth?

I know it continues to prove itself wrong, or revises its work. What I'm talking about is its arrogance. At times its leading faculty would rather mock than bask in the mystery. The mystery of certain subject matter that is.

And why are you lecturing me about religion? I agree with you.

That's an interesting distillation of what you think I was saying but I can't reciprocate I'm afraid.

Oh well. I'm not the first to say it. A lot of wise men in history have said before me. So I'm in good company.

What is this 'mystery' you'd like science to bask in? I think science is aware of a mystery, but that this mystery is not a religious one. Religious mystery is prepared to stay mysterious (in fact, it must, if it's interested in maintaining religious belief), but scientific mystery exists as a basis upon which we can move towards concrete knowledge. 'Mystery' according to science is the onus for discovery.

Again, I'm not trying to involve religion here. The work of the Society of Psychical Research. We'll start there. Very Egon Spengler & Ray Stantz-like

OK. But I'm just not sure why you'd call science as a blanket thing 'arrogant' if religion wasn't a motivator, even if religion isn't part of your argument. What is arrogant about an entire field of research?

I think you're making this harder than has to be. There are certain areas of dark science (or pseudoscience as the sceptics would call it) that are openly mocked, or laughed at by leading figures of mainstream science. This has been called "The arrogance of science", just to give it a title. This is not to say it encompasses all of science. It is only meant to imply one of its characteristics, carried out by its leading faculty.

OK, I get that. But I'm just saying that this happens in every field, the mainstream mocking the fringes. Including religion, faith and theology. There are progressive faith movements all the time, trying to move it forward from being dead, irrelevant, counterproductive. I'm not doing the comparison thing, just saying that all fields of study have these internal battles. I guess you know this already, and set against what I said about my experience, what you said makes more sense now.

Gotcha

This is pretty different from what you initially stated:

Just like your rants against "the media", you're making these statements about an enormous field and treating it like a single homogeneous entity. There's no inherent arrogance in Science as much as there are some scientists that may be arrogant. To address that, I'll just say that I am less concerned about their mocking and scoffing, and more about whether they're doing their all to find the answers to what we once deemed unanswerable.

Yup, this. Which is why I initially accused you (Harry) of making a blanket charge against science which I thought was weird.

I guess I kind of assumed you knew what I meant. Sorry, I have to work on wording things better.



You know a lot of Americans treat it as such though. One time on "Morning Joe" they had a discussion about the publics hatred for the media in general. I know it shouldn't be generalized, but it's too much work to single out all the outlets one dislikes and why. I guess it's better to have something like "The Daily Show" satirize the big three networks (MSNBC,CNN, FOX news).

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