If Life is Meaningless Anyway, then What's Wrong with Religion?

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With respect to the definition given for anecdotal... If that definition were universally applied then it would rule out all drug studies that rely on qualitative reports of affect by patients. Basically by that standard you have invalided research into painkillers, psychotropic drugs and mental health therapies. An organized collection of subjective reports counts as a data set from which scientific conclusions may be drawn. True anecdotes are outliers. The attempt to dismiss NDE research on that basis is misguided.

As for the NDE researchers I consider credible, they include Drs. Jeffrey Long, Sam Parnia, Pim van Pommel, and Bruce Greyson. THey have systematically collected data and published there results and in some instances their studies replicated. I am not aware of any skeptic who has performed any similarly rigorous research.

Pain killers can be objectively tested by applying pain stimulus and measuring physical non verbal response.

Antipsychotics medication can be objectively evaluated by comparing pre and post administration behaviors.

Mental health therapies can be objectively evaluated by comparing pre and post treatment behaviors.

Notice that none of these require the subject to relate stories.

Still waiting for the research, the study objectives, the data collection methods, the inclusion/exclusion criteria, the data analysis, independent reviews, ...................

Jeff Long, radiation oncologist, nuff said. Not qualified.
Sam Parnia, AWARE study, critique review: http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index...ce-of-nde/
Pim van Pommel, review of the Lancet publication: http://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=23455
Bruce Greyson, rational wiki: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Forum:Bruce...info_found, there are plenty of other critical reviews