Everyone has wondered if there is a life after death. If you are Christian, Muslim, or Jewish, the idea of an afterlife is deeply rooted in the concepts of your religion. But if you’re like me, who isn’t very religious and just can’t find the time for it, surely the idea of an afterlife puzzles you. Where the heck do we go after we die? Is there truly a heaven or a hell? Or do we actually reincarnate into another human being with no recollection of our previous lives? How could we even test the existence of an afterlife????

Well, that’s not to say that scientists don’t even try to prove if there is an afterlife. Of course they do. This study conducted by Dr. Steven Laureys focuses on near death experiences from patients. Dr. Laureys is from the Coma Science Group located in Liege, Belgium. In his study, Dr. Laureys used patients who experienced near death experiences, such as those who had heart attacks or went through comas, as his subjects. He had them answer memory questionnaires to find out how “real and Intense” their memories from the afterlife were. Dr. Laurey had many patients who would recollect being outside their physical bodies or seeing the distant light at the end of the tunnel. He also compared these near death memories with subjects’ memories of actual events that happened over the course of their lives and with dreams/thoughts (Brumfield). They also compared memories with control groups of patients who didn’t have near death experiences.

Dr. Laurey found that the NDEs were considered much more intense and real than any other event or dream from the majority of his subjects. Many claimed that there NDEs were real and actually happened. However, Dr. Laurey explained that the topic on hand needed much more research and replication to conclude anything. His team has not been able to use brain scans on these patients to find physiological changes which could hint at a mechanism. Personally, I think self-reporting can be influenced by bias and isn’t always reliable. For example, a patient who is extremely religious can credit his survival and having a NDE to God or some supernatural being they believe in. Can his/her recollection be considered reliable? Science cannot be explained by supernatural explanations.

Of course, there is always a sense of ethics when dealing with life or death situations. It is unethical to just test or “run brain scans on someone who was possibly facing the moment of death (Brumfield)”. That’s why Dr. Laureys and his team decided to give the questionnaires to patients after their recovery. Also, one cannot just assume that there is a state of spiritual being after you die. These results were merely from an observational study. No variables were manipulated in this case. Nothing can actually be proven, especially through the use of supernatural causes. Remember that supernatural explanations are not part of science. Dr. Laureys reiterated in his study that his results were in no way biased by religion.

Multiple studies have been done concerning the same topic including Dr. Sam Parnia’s from the State Univeristy of New York. This study basically shows similar results as the first one mentioned above. Dr. Parnia used a sample size of 2,060 patients from 15 hospitals in the UK, US and Austria, About half of them (46%) mentioned some sort of mental recollection from their near death memories (Withnall). But again, this study was observational. These were recollections of patients who survived and their accounts could have been biased. Scientists would never know for sure if these patients actually experienced a spiritual world unless they experienced it themselves. And even if they did, can they prove the hypothesis right with their own anecdotes? Anecdotes are not good inferences and could not possibly explain the presence of an afterlife. This article goes on to question the legitimacy of near death experiences, by stressing that the brain cannot process memories if it is nonfunctional. Therefore, the author claims that patients that claim they saw heaven or the afterlife were not really dead, and that there is a reason they are called NEAR death experiences (Shermer).

There seems to be a sort of consistency with people having memories from their near death experiences. But can we actually confirm that they were in a spiritual world? The legitimacy of a near death experience or recollection can be highly susceptible to bias or even just pretentiousness. Either way, we would have no way to prove the legitimacy of their recollections because it was only experienced by them.

What do you guys think? I believe that NDE’s aren’t very reliable to use, but it is the only way scientists use to explain the presence of an afterlife. How else would scientists would go about this hypothesis without breaking numerous codes of ethics or morality?

Picture source: http://www.inquisitr.com/1911883/what-happens-when-you-die-out-of-body-and-near-death-experiences-are-real-claims-heart-attack-study/