Critical questions: A not so natural theory
What about Telepathy or some other form of ESP (extra sensory perception)? Could drawing form the minds of the living person’s credibility explain corroborative near-death experiences? IT doesn’t look like it.
Firstly, it presupposes “Super ESP” hypothesis, that these powers permeates can explain countless phenomena that are now misunderstood. But a serious problem with this lovely-proposed theory is that it is unproven and therefore a shot in the dark.
Secondly, even if we did allow ESP, it still wouldn’t account for all NDEs.
Take the suggestion that corroborative information could have been received by telepathy of a living person (or similar means). That still does not account for enough of the crucial features of these evidential near-death cases, such as those I have presented.
For example, is telepathy the best explanation for Katie’s story? Where her knowledge of “everyday” details concerning her family at home—the specific food being served for dinner, the toys her siblings were playing with, where in the house they were etc. Could telepathy account for blind persons who correctly described the colours and styles of clothes and jewelry? Are we to suppose that such mundane items were even being thought about during the emergency? Similarly, did the patients with heart stoppage “pick up” the same ordinary information about the specific colours of suit coats, ties and other articles of clothing?
It is worth noting that during an NDE, many frequently report and describe themselves from the vantage point of the ceiling. This positioning is unexplainable by telepathic contact with another person—Sabom’s controlled sample confirmed the truth of this data.
Lets crank up the difficulty level for telepathy. How can people report any kind of information when their brains are not functioning. As with those who had a flat EEG? Learning mundane information about the room and clothes is one thing, but doing that when your brain is not operating is a whole other matter. How would this be possible?
Lastly, and perhaps one of the factors telepathy would struggle the most with would be those being with loved ones who have died, whose deaths previously unknown to the patient or even to those in the room with them. Critically, telepathy doesn’t seem to be able to resolve the conviction the dead person is doing fine. Neither can it handle peaceful desire of the patient to be with the deceased. [1] If you saw a loved one die in telepathy, you’d be distressed at a minimum, yet NDE patients are responding positively.
Even if we presupposed ESP, that does not rule out afterlife. [2] If an individual’s ESP exists after the death of the body, this would simply be another way to argue that we experience an afterlife. After all, the NDE includes the person’s own private memories and knowledge of self—as when the patient happily greets the loved one whom he immediately recognised, or is still concerned about family members who are ”left behind”. So even if someone could authenticate an ESP after death as a causal thesis, it would simply provide details concerning our personalities in that state—it would not refute life after death.
So we can conclude that alternative hypothesis do not successfully explain NDEs. Even combinations of these theories do not cancel the best NDE data. Medical, psychological, and other natural or not-natural proposals of various sorts fall short of the needed explanatory goal. In particular, it was, once again, the corroborative NDE cases that provide the major roadblocks to the objections. Therefore, our task now is to inquire whether NDEs provide strong evidence for an afterlife.
Sources
- We may recall the case of Kalmus’ sister who suddenly stretcher out her arm happily and said, “I’m going up.” Kubler-Ross, On Children and Death (New York: Macmillan/Collier Books, 1983), p208-209
- Osis and Haraldsson, At the Hour of Death, p139-140
