As a kid, I was fascinated by NDEs and similar strange phenomena. But as I got older, I started to understand why we have to take such reports with a large grain of salt. I'm not sure that anyone else explains it as well as Christina:
So here's the problem.
There's this phenomenon -- consciousness.
There are essentially two ways to explain it. Either it's a physical, biological product of the brain -- or it has a component other than brain function: a soul that is separate from the brain, and that survives when the brain dies.
And there are two sets of evidence supporting these two explanations.
The evidence supporting the "biological product of the brain" explanation comes from rigorously-gathered, carefully-tested, thoroughly cross-checked, double-blinded, placebo-controlled, replicated, peer-reviewed research. An enormous mountain of research. A mountain of research that is growing more mountainous every day.
I cannot emphasize this enough. Read any current book on neurology or neuropsychology... or at least, any current book on neurology or neuropsychology that isn't written by a woo believer with an axe to grind who's cherry-picking the data. Read Oliver Sacks, V.S. Ramachandran, Steven Pinker. We are getting closer to understanding consciousness every day. The sciences of neurology and neuropsychology are, it is true, very much in their infancy... but they are advancing by astonishing leaps and bounds, even as we speak. And what they are finding, consistently, thoroughly, across the board, is that, whatever consciousness is, it is intimately and inextricably linked to the brain. Changes in the brain result in changes in consciousness -- changes sometimes so drastic that they render a person's personality entirely unrecognizable. Changes in consciousness can be seen, using magnetic resonance imagery, as changes in the brain. This is the increasingly clear conclusion of the science: Consciousness is a product of the brain. Period.
And this evidence has been gathered, and continues to be gathered, using the gold standard of evidence, methods specifically designed to filter out biases and known cognitive errors as much as is humanly possible: rigorously-gathered, carefully-tested, thoroughly cross-checked, double-blinded, placebo-controlled, replicated, peer-reviewed research.
Now. Compare, please, to the evidence supporting the "independent soul" explanation of consciousness.
Including near-death experiences, and the supposedly inexplicable things that happen to some people during them.
The evidence supporting the "independent soul" explanation is flimsy at best. It is unsubstantiated. It comes largely from personal anecdotes. It is internally inconsistent. It is shot through with discrepancies. It is loaded with biases and cognitive errors -- especially confirmation bias, the tendency to exaggerate evidence that confirms what we already believe, and to ignore evidence that contradicts it. It has methodological errors that a sixth-grade science project winner could spot in 10 seconds.
The only thing the "independent soul" explanation has going for it is our desperate wish to believe that it's true. But that, by itself, is enough not just to keep the belief alive, but to make it the belief of the vast majority of people, at least in America. Well, it's very easy to believe what we really want to believe, isn't it?
There is not a single account of an immaterial soul leaving the body in a near-death experience that meets the gold standard of scientific evidence. Not even close. Supposedly accurate perceptions of things they couldn't have seen by people near death? Bogus. Supposedly accurate predictions of things they couldn't have known by people near death? Bogus. The "shoe on the window ledge that the dying person supposedly couldn't possibly have known about?" Bogus. The supposed eerie similarity of near-death experiences? Bogus. (The similarities that these experiences do have are entirely consistent with them all being created by human brains... and the differences between them are not only vast, but exactly what you would expect if these experiences were generated by people's brains, based on their own beliefs about death. Christians near death see Jesus, Hindus near death see Hindu gods, etc.)
These claims -- and the claims that these experiences could not possibly be explained by anything other than a supernatural soul -- are anecdotal at best. Second- and third- hand hearsay. Gossip, essentially. And like most gossip, it leaves out the parts of the story that are less juicy, less consistent with what we already think about the world or what we want to think about it... and exaggerates the parts of the story that tell us what we already believe or want to believe. Believers in the soul love to tell the bogus story about the shoe on the window ledge. They're less likely to tell the stories about the people near death who saw things that weren't there, or who made predictions that didn't happen, or who saw people alongside them in their supposed out-of-body experience who weren't actually near death themselves.
And every time a claim about a soul leaving the body when near death has been tested, using good, rigorous methods, it's utterly fallen apart. Every single rigorously done study examining claims about near death experiences has completely failed to show any perceptions or predictions that couldn't have been entirely natural. Again. And again. And again, and again, and again. And again. And... oh, you get the idea.
As Christina points out, scientists are human, too. And they don't want to believe that they'll die, that life is brief and there's nothing afterward.
Now, many believers in the soul will argue that yes, they are biased in favor of their belief -- but so are the scientists who've concluded that consciousness is a physical process and the soul doesn't exist. But this makes no sense whatsoever. Scientists are human, too: they don't want to die, and they'd be just as happy as anyone to learn that they were going to live forever. In fact, for centuries, most scientists did believe in the soul, and much early science was dedicated to proving the soul's existence and exploring its nature. It took decades upon decades of fruitless research in this field before scientists finally gave it up as a bad job. The conclusion that the soul does not exist was not about proving a pre-existing agenda: quite the opposite. It was about the evidence leading inexorably to a conclusion that was both surprising and upsetting. What's more, if any scientist today could conclusively prove the existence of the soul, they'd instantly become the most famous and respected scientist in the history of the world. What possible motivation could they have for being biased against the soul hypothesis?
To me, the simplest, clearest evidence that we have no "soul" that can exist independently of our flesh and blood brain is the personality changes that frequently take place after brain injury. This is well-documented. My personality, my "soul," is obviously an artifact of my biological brain. I wish it were otherwise, because my brain will die someday relatively soon,... and so will I.
I wish even more that my friends and family who've already died were still "alive" somewhere, somehow, but all the wishes in the world won't make it so. Death was the end of everyone I've loved and will be the end of everyone I love now. They live on, briefly, in my memory. And they live on in the effect they've had on the world. We could wish for more, but that would be futile. Instead, we should be grateful for what we've got.
Reality wins. Reality is more important than anything we could make up about it. (And it's a whole lot more interesting.) If we want to be intimately connected with the universe, we need to accept what the universe is telling us, through evidence, is true about itself. We need to not treat the world we make up in our heads as more important than the world outside our heads. If we want to be intimately connected with the universe, we need to accept the reality about it.
Even when that reality contradicts our most cherished beliefs.
Even when that reality is frightening, or painful, or sad.
And that includes the reality of death.
If we find the idea of death upsetting, we need to not cover our eyes and ears in the face of death, and pretend that it isn't real. We need, instead, to find and create secular philosophies of death that provide comfort and meaning. We need to find value in the transient as much as in the permanent. We need to see change and loss and death as inherent and necessary to life, without which the things we value in life would not be possible. We need to see death as providing inspiration and motivation to experience life as fully as we can, and to get things done while we still have time. We need to view death as a natural process, something that connects us with the great chain of cause and effect in the universe. We need to take comfort in the idea that, even though we will die and our death will be forever, the memories people have of us will live on, and the world will be different because we were here. We need to take comfort in making this life as meaningful and valuable as we possibly can: for ourselves, and for everyone else around us. We need to recognize how astronomically lucky we were to have been born into this life at all, and not see it as a tragedy because that life won't last forever.
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