Just a concerned family man,

Dan

Polytheism also has had much greater longevity than monotheism, judging from history and extrapolated prehistory. So the question ought to be why people believe in gods, plural.

It annoys me when people project Abrahamic stereotypes on other forms of religion, because the Abrahamic religions have features that are not very common, like a dedication to squashing rival religions.

In any event, there is no reason to attribute any non-natural process to the near death experience.

Michael Shermer, of the Skeptics Society, has investigated NDEs extensively and this is the conclusion he reaches also.

I’m not sure what you mean by this sentence:

If Alper is building his case by stating that near-death experiences (NDEs) are the result of purely phsyiological or pharmacological causes then I suggest he take a fresh look at the recent medical research.

Do you mean that there are non-physical (supernatural) causes of NDEs or do you mean that there are natural causes in addition to physiological & pharmacological ones, such as psychological ones?

I browsed through an admittedly limited number of pages at the iands site and was not impressed in a positive way. Here’s a sample of an introduction to an article:

This is one of the very few NDE studies to be conducted prospectively, meaning that a large group of people experiencing cessation of their heart and/or breathing function were resuscitated during a fixed period of time, and were interviewed.

Prospective studies? From all appearances, this was not a “prospective” study in any normal sense of the word. This makes it sound as if a bunch of people were selected to have heart attacks and subsuquent resuscitation.

Although the problematic wording does nothing to explain how the study was conducted, it does illuminate the questionable manner in which the study was designed and the odd conclusions that some are drawing from it. To me it sounds as if someone is using a bunch of sciency sounding jargon but not really knowing what it means.

If you want to understand the qualities and varieties of consciousness you would be better served by reading a bit of the work done by VS Ramachandran or Oliver Sacks. They both have marvelous peer reviewed articles but, more useful for most people, they are enormously talented writers and are able to make even arcane neurobiology understandable to anyone who can read.

In any event, there is no reason to attribute any non-natural process to the near death experience.

The most relevant data is presented in a DVD by Dr. Bruce Greyson, a research psychiatrist at the University of Virginia, of a presentation he made at an October, 2006 conference at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houton. Greyson shows that current research data, mainly done in recent years at medical centers, does not support the physiological explanations for NDEs. His talk can be obtained by clicking on the 2006 conference link in the center of the home page. The talk is titled “Explanatory Models of NDEs.” Greyson is not making theological conclusions but simply outlining what the data is showing. It is a compelling case.