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This article was nominated for merging with Near-death studies on 21 August 2018. The result of the discussion (permanent link) was No consensus. |
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 17 January 2022 and 11 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Scoobydoo2022, The Best Wiki Writter, JACstudent, Finnigan71, Seankingston101, EV0 Abbott (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Candles59, JDJ44, Roxlef, Mylo27, Jbeditor16.
The article is presenting NDE as "factual" when it is a pseudoscience backed only by anecdotal evidences. Random Taong Grasa (talk) 13:24, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
Article must be crap when the topic is crap. It is all necessarily crap, in the absence of a definition of 'near-death'. Why is it missing? All phenomena described are well-known symptomology of drifting in and out of consciousness. And who's to say a patient apparently unconscious actually is, as conventionally understood? That is, insensate to the world? Why might they not continue to hear and form memories, for example? The focus on cardiac arrest is bizarre. What has cessation of heartbeat to do with anything? Intuitively, it would take some time for loss of consciousness from apoxia to set in. Where do you draw the line between consciousness and lack thereof? The key figure is never mentioned: what proportion of so-called NDE's involved a situation that could reasonably be classified as likely to proceed to death? Well, very, very few, of course, being the obvious reason this is never reported. 'What we have here ... is ... a failure ... (to recognise classic pseudoscientific claptrap, together with a failure) ... to communicate...' 122.151.210.84 (talk) 01:55, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
This section was arbitrarily removed in its entirety by MrOllie after I tried to make it more robust. He has called it "fringeish" without any justification. The section is historical and anthropological and has nothing to do with whether or not NDEs are veridical or not. The works cited are all by scholars -- historians of religions with PhDs from prominent universities with works published by Oxford University Press and other academic publishers.
Here's the section (the new material added is in italics):
Historian of religions Gregory Shushan published an analysis of the afterlife beliefs of five ancient civilizations and compared them with historical and contemporary reports of NDEs, and shamanic afterlife "journeys". Shushan found elements that were specific to cultures, but concluded that similarities across time, place, and culture could not be explained by coincidence and that there probably is some form of mutual influence between NDEs and culture and that this influence, in turn, influences individual NDEs. In Shushan's follow-up study on NDEs in indigenous societies, he demonstrated that although NDEs occur around the world regardless of cultural or religious background, their reception varies widely. Many Native American, Polynesian, and Melanesian cultures valorized NDEs and stated outright that they were the source of local knowledge about the afterlife. In contrast, for many Australian, Micronesian, and African societies, NDEs were less relevant to afterlife beliefs, and were sometimes seen as a form of possession.
Others argue that near-death experiences and many of their elements such as vision of beings of light, judgment, the tunnel, or the life review are closely related to religious and spiritual traditions of the West. It was mainly Christian visionaries, Spiritualists, Occultists, and Theosophists of the 19th and 20th century that reported them.
Parnia argues that although the interpretation of NDEs are influenced by religious, social, and cultural backgrounds, the core elements appear to transcend borders and are universal. As evidence, he states that some of these core elements have been reported by children at an age where they should not have been influenced by culture or tradition. Greyson states the central features of NDEs are universal and have been observed throughout history and in different cultures and have not changed over time.''''
Here is my reply to MrOllie after he said my edit "doesn't convey any new information":
"Your comment 'this doesn't convey any new information' shows that you either didn't read carefully or that you don't understand the subject. Of course it conveys new information. It's a brief summary of the conclusions of an entirely different study, that reached entirely new and different conclusions, involving different cultures, from different time periods and of different social scale. The salient point is that NDEs influenced afterlife beliefs in some societies and did not in others -- which is not stated in the previous sentences."
MrOllie replied: "I read carefully, but still think the new source duplicates what we already have... In fact, the whole section is fairly fringey and lacks secondary sourcing."
He then deleted it entirely with no explanation on what he is basing his assessments. He does not explain what makes anthropological and historical work "fringey," and is not correct to say it lacks sourcing. This is a totally baseless and subjective deletion. Without this section, the article is based entirely on a hypothetical Western stereotype. 2600:1700:A790:63B0:D955:12E0:459F:4A9 (talk) 03:53, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
could not be explained by coincidencebased on one person's opinion is classic fringe writing. This kind of thing is why Wikipedia is supposed to be written based on secondary sources that explain what the mainstream view of a field is. MrOllie (talk) 12:09, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
The phenomenon NDe is already completely explained as result of a working memory - where we can perceive as a consious experience how a single stimulus/thought is processed by the brain (step-by-step). Therefore NDEs of persons in different cultures show identical contents and structures - because all human brains are working with the same neuronal structure: the brain. NDEs have nothing to do with death, nor with dying - because the words ´death, dying´ can be used only when this process is performed in reality: this does mean that these persons are dead and a corpse when they had such an experience - and can not tell anything about this experience because death is not reversible.
The imagination/thought ´I will die / I am dead´ is a wrong idea for a person who can think. Because persons who can think are alive! Therefore the start of NDEs can be triggered by such ideas which are seen obviously as wrong/nonsense by outr brain. Then the brain concentrate its activity on the job to process a nonsense-experience for which we have no comparable experience in the memory. Thus we can say: Not the imagination ´I will die / I am dead´ is the trigger to start a NDE: The trigger is, that the brain has to process an experience which is obviously wrong/nonsense.
To process this strange experience - the brain use two strategies: A) this strange experience it compared step-by-step against the contents of the memory - these contents are reactivated when the comparison is performed an can be perceived as a conscious experience as a life-review in hierarchical order in a very high speed. 2) sometimes a virtual simulation of the actual situation is performed - which we know as an Out-of-Body-experience. (When the life-review is perceived in hierarchical ASCENDING order - then it will be started in the 5th month of feoetus-age - in the same order as the physical senses develop: touch > acoustic > optical sense (= tunnel experience) > birth(indirect, light perception change from dim to brilliant) > early social encounter experiences (our parents are recalled as a ´being of light´ from which we get unlimited love and affection) > autobiographical experiences from th 2nd year of childhood up to the actual age. BUT - when a life-review is performed in hierarchical DESCENDING order - then it will start with the actual age and go back only until to the 2nd-4th year of childhood. We can not recall experiences from an earlier age - (= infantile/childhood amnesia) because earlier experiences have no autobiographical code (I-/my- code). ) (This explanation of NDEs is published already since 2006 - and it is embarrassing, that it is ignored up to now in discussions to the topic NDE. ) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:F2:5F3C:A812:AD79:B7BB:8F08:15D4 (talk) 14:38, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
To A) NDEs in different cultures show identical contents and structures - that´s true. Typical for all NDEs are contents and structures which are already described since 1975 in the book of Dr. Ramond Moody ´Life after Life´. In this book we can read several examples of NDEs.
In my text you can read a complete explanation of NDEs - you can study the explanation model if you are inteested in the topic NDEs. But when you want to discuss the cultural history of this topic - then you have to accept that this new access/explanation to the topic NDE is now part of the history too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:F2:5F3C:A824:7C37:479E:6DEA:754A (talk) 17:36, 14 March 2024 (UTC)