Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Near Death, Distorted
This is a piece in Salon about the earlier NDE article.
Near-death, distorted
Salon has had a redesign, which is fine; it seems to do this periodically just to confuse us. I’ll adjust to that, but what I don’t like is that the first thing I saw highlighted was an article so full of woo that for a moment I thought I’d stumbled onto the Huffington Post. We are now supposed to believe that science has explained near-death experiences (NDEs), and the answer is proof of life after death. It’s all nonsense; some editor somewhere needs to learn some critical thinking, because this article is filed under “neuroscience” when it ought to be in a category called “bullshit.”
The first clue that this is going to be bad is the author, Mario Beauregard. Beauregard was coauthor with Denyse O’Leary of one of the worst, that is, most incompetently written and idiotically conceived, books I’ve ever read, “The Spiritual Brain.” It’s not just that he thought it sensible to team up with a well-known intelligent-design crank, but that the content is unreadable and the “science” is gobbledy-gook — Beauregard is a well-established kook, and here he is, writing for Salon.
NDEs are evidence of nothing but the creative power of the human mind. NDE proponents are constantly trotting out the same tired old anecdotes and the same tired old bogus misinterpretations, and this article is just more of the same. If you’ve ever looked into the NDE literature, you’ll know that two cases that are repeatedly brought up are the 20- to 30-year-old stories of Pam and Maria’s shoe; they have become something close to legend. These stories are poorly documented — “Maria,” for instance, can’t even be found in any hospital records, despite a story that details many medical details. Beauregard blithely recounts this anecdotal story as evidence that NDEs are real.
More: http://www.salon.com/2012/04/26/near_death_distorted/
Salon has had a redesign, which is fine; it seems to do this periodically just to confuse us. I’ll adjust to that, but what I don’t like is that the first thing I saw highlighted was an article so full of woo that for a moment I thought I’d stumbled onto the Huffington Post. We are now supposed to believe that science has explained near-death experiences (NDEs), and the answer is proof of life after death. It’s all nonsense; some editor somewhere needs to learn some critical thinking, because this article is filed under “neuroscience” when it ought to be in a category called “bullshit.”
The first clue that this is going to be bad is the author, Mario Beauregard. Beauregard was coauthor with Denyse O’Leary of one of the worst, that is, most incompetently written and idiotically conceived, books I’ve ever read, “The Spiritual Brain.” It’s not just that he thought it sensible to team up with a well-known intelligent-design crank, but that the content is unreadable and the “science” is gobbledy-gook — Beauregard is a well-established kook, and here he is, writing for Salon.
NDEs are evidence of nothing but the creative power of the human mind. NDE proponents are constantly trotting out the same tired old anecdotes and the same tired old bogus misinterpretations, and this article is just more of the same. If you’ve ever looked into the NDE literature, you’ll know that two cases that are repeatedly brought up are the 20- to 30-year-old stories of Pam and Maria’s shoe; they have become something close to legend. These stories are poorly documented — “Maria,” for instance, can’t even be found in any hospital records, despite a story that details many medical details. Beauregard blithely recounts this anecdotal story as evidence that NDEs are real.
More: http://www.salon.com/2012/04/26/near_death_distorted/
Interesting that he doesn't even bring up what I believe is the most damning evidence against any supernatural explanation for NDEs, the fact that fighter pilots training in a centrifuge have similar experiences without dying or being near death, but simply by temporarily losing blood flow to the brain.
9 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
