Atheists, I want to know your explanation for these Out of body experiences?

[LastPoet]

They sell books?

[Faith No More]

Setting aside the dubious nature of these claims and proving them, can an NDE proponent explain to me why only a fraction of people that nearly die experience one? A friend of mine was declared dead for nearly two minutes, and he experienced nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

I guess his soul was on the fritz?

[Angrboda]

http://www.themarysue.com/out-of-body-explained/

[Alex K]

Quantum entanglement of the soul wave function with the God operator.

[brewer]

tonylang, is that you?

[The Valkyrie]

Setting aside the dubious nature of these claims and proving them, can an NDE proponent explain to me why only a fraction of people that nearly die experience one?  A friend of mine was declared dead for nearly two minutes, and he experienced nothing.  Zero.  Zilch.  Nada.

I guess his soul was on the fritz?

This.

From personal experience, and I don't expect this to be evidence one way or the other, I was in a motorcycle accident years ago and my heart stopped for nearly two minutes.  I also saw nothing.

Can you please explain to me why these experiences, when they involve an afterlife, always involve the afterlife the person is culturally predisposed to see?  Example: a Christian or a person born and raised in the West will see the CHristian afterlife.  Heaven or Hell, etc.  A Hindu will see the Hindu afterlife (whatever that may entail), not the Christian one.

[Aristocatt]

Quantum entanglement of the soul wave function with the God operator.

You forgot to add 
"What science tells us about NDE's is it is simply a"  before finishing your new age interpretation!


It's basically a rule to include "What science tells us" before making up new age bullshit.

[Minimalist]

The people reporting them are full of shit.

[Whateverist]

Do you think that these examples I provide, albeit anecdotal, potentially prove a soul exists?

No.

[bennyboy]

Okay, OP, let me say a couple things.

First of all, you are talking about anecdotal evidence. There are a couple problems with it:

1) People sometimes invent "truth" after the fact without realizing it. So somebody does NOT know there's a problem, for example, but after the problem occurs, they are 100% sure they predicted it: "I just KNEW something bad was going to happen, and then I got that terrible phone call!" They are not lying-- they just don't know the power of the mind in altering memories to match a narrative.

2) Given enough OBEs (and I can say the experiences are definitely real, since I've had a couple), you will have a few freak outcomes that are very compelling. If enough people have magic crystals, for example, some of them will be "miraculously" cured of cancer or will win a lottery. If their testimony is considered, and the many others whose testimony doesn't support their conclusions is disregarded, you get a false picture.

3) OBEs can be achieved in laboratory conditions, and by far the weight of evidence is against the idea that they are anything other than a sense-dissociative state, a la lucid dreaming, hypnosis and so on.

4) Sometimes people just lie or fudge details, to get famous or to sell books.

Now, it's possible that a few people really HAVE used OBEs to achieve real world results, to see what was happening in other places, and so on. Nobody can prove conclusively that it's impossible. But given what we know about anecdotal evidence, OBE-as-real-astral-travel is not the best explanation for those anecdtoes.

Understand this. If it keeps you from substituting magical crystals for actual medicine, or soothsayers for a proper pros-and-cons list in making big life decisions, understanding why anecdotal evidence fails could be crucially important to you.

imo, that should be /thread