Sci. Am. denies NDE\'s mean anything: Greyson's response (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, December 29, 2021, 15:08 (869 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: We have accepted NRE's on this website as phenomena Which need to be recognized and discussed. I recommend the book for all interested. NDE's are common occurring in up to 15-20% of folks, when searched for. It raises the question, why do we have them? Think about your answer. I have.

dhw: As I have constantly reiterated, the two main reasons for my inability to accept atheism are the arguments for design and psychic experiences such as NDEs, especially those in which the person concerned is given information which he/she could not have known beforehand and which proves to be correct.

DAVID: NDE's confirm that the mind and brain can be separated by loss of the brain function and the mind still operates completely. Which means, as Greyson and van Lommel propose, the brain receives what the mind produces. Documented psychic episodes produced by humans fully awake, tell us a psychic mind-level exists in our reality. Thus the universe is both material and conscious. WE are purely material but can reach the conscious level with our consciousness.

So WE are not “purely material”! NDEs suggest that our mind (some people call it our soul) can exist independently of the body, and does so in an afterlife. NDEs are only one manifestation of this concept. Many people have had experiences of places or incidents or meetings that suggest a form of consciousness that operates independently of the time and space in which the living brain finds itself. As I said above, those cases which involve new information later confirmed by events are particularly impressive. I for one am not prepared to dismiss them. Materialism and dualism are opposing theories, and we spent some time a few years ago trying to reconcile them. The last discussion (“Reconciling materialism and dualism”) began on 5th January 2018.

NDE's certainly imply dualism