Problems with this section; for Frank (Agnosticism)

by Frank Paris , Wednesday, November 25, 2009, 04:00 (5265 days ago) @ David Turell

"During the NDE they walk down a dark tunnel to a very bright light. They meet people there, people who are dead, and some times are told that someone known to them has just recently died, by telepathy"-Do people from Eastern cultures have this same experience? Is this even known? I think you've made statements to the effect that the same experience has been reported for thousands of years. What is the evidence for this? Do devout Zen Buddhists ever have this experience? What I'm trying to determine is whether there is a cultural and religious bias going on in the experience. I would expect NDE's to reflect religious and cultural biases and would only be impressed if they weren't and still gave this essentially Christian picture of the afterlife.-In the report you describe, dead people inform the person that someone else has recently died. I can easily imagine how the brain might fabricate this story if my alternative explanation is true, that the person telepathically senses that this other person has recently died by the severance of the telepathic connection. The brain then builds this story of how people known to be dead inform the NDE subject about the new death. The brain does this to "rationalize" the experience of this severance of the telepathic connection to person who just died. The brain of the NDE subject would be likely to construct this story if the subject already subscribes to the Christian mythology of the afterlife.-The stories would be much more impressive if they were reported by subjects whose culture and religious beliefs were entirely different from Western monotheistic mythology. But typically individuals have religious dreams taken from their own cultural backgrounds. Even classical mystical experiences from cultures that don't believe in a personal God have experiences of an impersonal God, and Christians always have mystical experiences of a personal God. It's almost impossible to get away from cultural biases, even in genuine mystical experiences.-"The majority are pleasant, but around 17% are unpleasant."-Maybe those are the people who found themselves at the gates of hell, or who thought that's where they were going if they died.-"Frank, I know the scientific method. I've about 34 entries in the world medical literature, from a time I was a research fellow and considered academic medicine as a career."-You got so interested in pulling rank on me that you forgot to answer the question. It is very easy to see that ego simply got in the way. Best thing to do is simply to answer the question without getting all ad hominem on me.