near to death episodes (Endings)

by dhw, Sunday, March 02, 2008, 08:44 (6109 days ago) @ David Turell

Although David Turell is evidently well able to argue for himself, and does so with admirable restraint, I must own to being slightly shocked by John Clinch's bald comment that David is "confused" and "befuddled". The argument seems perfectly clear to me: that he believes generally in evolution, but thinks that the original life form may have been programmed (or "coded") by an "imbedded intelligence" to allow for the changes that take place during evolution. Part of the confusion has perhaps come about because of the term "Darwinist", which is sometimes erroneously equated with "atheist". Darwin was an agnostic who made it clear that there was no inherent clash between his theory of evolution and theism. Another area of confusion, however, may lie in the inability of some people to separate evolution by natural selection from the unrelated hypothesis of abiogenesis. There is no contradiction between belief in the former and non-belief (or even disbelief) in the latter, and I can't help wondering if in this context it is John who is confused and befuddled. I can certainly see no other reason why he should fail to grasp David's point. - I have tried to locate the Pim Van Lommel article on "near death", but one can only access it through www.thelancet.com, and this means registering. I have tried to register three times, and have failed to do so. Is there any other way, David, in which you could make this article available to us? - In the meantime, the first article that I found is freely available in a version that is much easier to read, on:
www.nderf.org/vonlommel_consciousness.htm (note, the "von" is correct).
I also found an interesting interview with Van Lommel: www.odemagazine.com/doc/29/life_goes_on - .