If there was no brain activity then the brain would be non-functioning and a person would be incapable of experiencing anything. In most cases of reported NDE's the individual has suffering hypoxia and temporary or permanent brain damage which can cause the person to suffer hallucinations, and it's not unreasonable to expect that a brain under extreme physiological stress isn't going to be functioning property resulting in some odd experiences.
There is a distinct absence of evidence to support the existence of souls. We are currently unable to detect them, our consciousness while not well understood is better understood in terms of an emergent property of our brain/body, and the primary drive behind it is to qualify religious claims rather than something which has been implied or suggested by study of the natural world.
If people were able to leave their bodies under controlled conditions and given accurate reports on things which the couldn't see from their bodies position, if we had reliable communication from the dead, or if we were able to detect the souls of people either directly or indirectly then we may have some reasons to pursue the soul hypothesis but we don't. All we have are a variety of quacks and con artists who either intentionally or unconsciously deceive others into believing that they can commune with the dead, or claim to be capable of astral project but fail abysmally when required to be specific about what they can see.
As for the common framing of experiences within a religious context this isn't entirely surprising as I suspect many of these people are religiously inclined anyway or if not have been subject to cultural influences which make the religious interpretation particularly likely.
There is a distinct absence of evidence to support the existence of souls. We are currently unable to detect them, our consciousness while not well understood is better understood in terms of an emergent property of our brain/body, and the primary drive behind it is to qualify religious claims rather than something which has been implied or suggested by study of the natural world.
If people were able to leave their bodies under controlled conditions and given accurate reports on things which the couldn't see from their bodies position, if we had reliable communication from the dead, or if we were able to detect the souls of people either directly or indirectly then we may have some reasons to pursue the soul hypothesis but we don't. All we have are a variety of quacks and con artists who either intentionally or unconsciously deceive others into believing that they can commune with the dead, or claim to be capable of astral project but fail abysmally when required to be specific about what they can see.
As for the common framing of experiences within a religious context this isn't entirely surprising as I suspect many of these people are religiously inclined anyway or if not have been subject to cultural influences which make the religious interpretation particularly likely.
Um...
