Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences by Jeffrey Long and Paul Perry
This book is an interesting compilation of near death experiences organized as "evidence" of the afterlife. Although the authors don't prove their case as conclusively as they seem to think, they do good work organizing their material.
Ever since Raymond Moody published the first book on near death experiences, they have been studied and examined. This book attempts to make general arguments for the existence of an afterlife through using thousands of NDEs published on a website by the people who allegedly had them.
Unfortunately, this is far from conclusive. We love to hear anecdotal stories, but scientists cannot accept them as any kind of proof.
First and most obviously, there are people in this world who lie. Shocking, I know -- but still a fact.
And though sometimes people say, "But why we they lie about something like?" some people still do. Why they do is a deep question.
I used to know a guy who became a somewhat prominent horror writer who liked to tell how he'd made up a story of spotting a UFO, and how uncritically what he said was accepted by the true believers.
Secondly, even if the person telling about their NDE is 100% sincere, there's no way to question even the basics. For instance, their heart stopped but they saw Dr. Jones wearing a bright red shirt. We can't access their medical records to verify their heart really did stop, and Dr. Jones won't remember what he wore that night.
In short, this book uses a lot of data, much of it no doubt sincere, but all of subject as "garbage" going in, so its going out arguments are also suspect.
They have gone about the process systematically. Long is an oncologist, after all. They had everyone fill out questionnaires.
To me, the only really convincing argument is the evidence of people perceiving their surroundings despite clinical death -- no detectable heart beat and even no detectable brain function.
Yet many of these people report being out of their bodies and observing what's going on in the hospital. They can and do recount conversations held by medical staff and incidents that happened during such periods.
Unfortunately, these have to be very specific to be convincing, because many people have watched enough TV shows to have a good idea what goes on in a hospital ER during a life and death procedures, so just calling for the shock paddles "stat" isn't enough.
However, there are cases where people could recount specific incidents and conversations even though they were clinically unconscious and should have no conscious memories at all.
The other aspects of typical NDEs are quite interesting, but cannot be verified -- unfortunately.
That children seem to have them, despite not having heard about NDEs, is interesting but not convincing either. These days, even very young children could have heard about near death experiences from TV.
Ever since Raymond Moody published the first book on near death experiences, they have been studied and examined. This book attempts to make general arguments for the existence of an afterlife through using thousands of NDEs published on a website by the people who allegedly had them.
Unfortunately, this is far from conclusive. We love to hear anecdotal stories, but scientists cannot accept them as any kind of proof.
First and most obviously, there are people in this world who lie. Shocking, I know -- but still a fact.
And though sometimes people say, "But why we they lie about something like?" some people still do. Why they do is a deep question.
I used to know a guy who became a somewhat prominent horror writer who liked to tell how he'd made up a story of spotting a UFO, and how uncritically what he said was accepted by the true believers.
Secondly, even if the person telling about their NDE is 100% sincere, there's no way to question even the basics. For instance, their heart stopped but they saw Dr. Jones wearing a bright red shirt. We can't access their medical records to verify their heart really did stop, and Dr. Jones won't remember what he wore that night.
In short, this book uses a lot of data, much of it no doubt sincere, but all of subject as "garbage" going in, so its going out arguments are also suspect.
They have gone about the process systematically. Long is an oncologist, after all. They had everyone fill out questionnaires.
To me, the only really convincing argument is the evidence of people perceiving their surroundings despite clinical death -- no detectable heart beat and even no detectable brain function.
Yet many of these people report being out of their bodies and observing what's going on in the hospital. They can and do recount conversations held by medical staff and incidents that happened during such periods.
Unfortunately, these have to be very specific to be convincing, because many people have watched enough TV shows to have a good idea what goes on in a hospital ER during a life and death procedures, so just calling for the shock paddles "stat" isn't enough.
However, there are cases where people could recount specific incidents and conversations even though they were clinically unconscious and should have no conscious memories at all.
The other aspects of typical NDEs are quite interesting, but cannot be verified -- unfortunately.
That children seem to have them, despite not having heard about NDEs, is interesting but not convincing either. These days, even very young children could have heard about near death experiences from TV.
