One suggestion skeptics offer is that they originate in hypoxia (shortage of oxygen) or hypercarbia (excess carbon dioxide) in the brain. Egnor, who has treated these conditions, points out that these conditions produce distress, not the calm of a near-death experience.
Egnor recently appeared on Piers Morgan's podcast with prominent skeptic Michael Shermer and offered four challenges to anyone who doubts that NDEs are veridical, (i.e. they can be shown to be true). His appearance on the podcast is recounted in an article at Evolution News, and the whole episode is very interesting. It can be viewed here. In it Egnor presents the following four claims about NDEs beginning at about the 12:18 mark:
1. NDEs are very clear. They’re very organized. they often involve a life review, which is not the kind of thing you see from a brain that is hallucinating or a brain that is dying, a brain that lacks oxygen.
2. NDE experiencers often see things that can be confirmed. About 20% of people with near-death experiences have out-of body experiences where they leave their body and see things that are happening in the room during the time that they have no heartbeat, during the time that they are deeply unconscious and comatose because their brain isn’t working.
In the podcast Michael Shermer states that one test of NDEs that he could accept as dispositive would be if the near-death experiencer reported seeing numbers on machinery that could only be seen from a vantage point near the ceiling of the room. Shermer claimed that such experiences have never been reported, but in fact they have.
3. Meeting only persons who have died. Egnor says that a third thing that fascinates him and isn’t often mentioned is that he's unaware of any reports in the medical literature of a person who goes down the "tunnel" and meets dead relatives but who actually also met a living person. That is, all near-death experiences where one encounters people "on the other side" are [with] people who are dead, even if the experiencer didn’t know they were dead.
There have been some fascinating cases of people in car accidents where somebody in the car died. Another passenger has a near-death experience and the experiencer sees the dead person on the other side but doesn't see other passengers in the car who, unbeknownst to the experiencer, survived the accident.
Egnor goes on to remark that, "Of course, at some point, a credible instance of seeing a living person may emerge from the literature. But even so, if the vast majority of experiences involve seeing people who have died, we should ask, how likely is it that a mere hallucination would work so selectively that way?"
4. The fourth challenge Egnor poses to the skeptic is to account for why near-death experiences are often transformative. People are profoundly affected by their experience. From the Evolution News summary:
In addition to these four challenges Egnor mentions one other fascinating story that I'll explain in tomorrow's post.In The Immortal Mind, Egnor quotes Tulane University psychologist Marilyn A. Mendoza, a specialist in grief counseling, who succinctly expresses what many counselors have noted: “Perhaps the most common after-effect of an NDE is the loss of the fear of death and a strengthened belief in the afterlife. There is typically a new awareness of meaning and purpose in experiencers’ lives. A new sense of self with increased self-esteem is reported.”That effect shows up in research studies too. Leeds Beckett University psychologist Steve Taylor, author of Spiritual Science (2018), offers a striking fact about the depth of the transformation:“It’s remarkable that one single experience can have such a profound, long-lasting, transformational effect. This is illustrated by research showing that people who have near-death experiences following suicide attempts very rarely attempt suicide again. This is in stark contrast to the normal pattern — in fact, a previous suicide attempt is usually the strongest predictor of actual suicide.”That is indeed a significant finding. Some might argue that people who recall NDEs are overstating their newfound commitment to a different way of seeing life. But when suicidal people stop attempting suicide, they have clearly undergone a concrete and highly significant behavior change. Generally, the best predictor of any future behavior is past behavior.
