The End Of Infidelity: A Reply To The End Of Christianity

[JasonTE]

Chrawnus,

The book by Sabom that you just downloaded is good. It has a lot of valuable information in it. It's somewhat dated, though. Since its publication, further evidence about the Pam Reynolds case has been brought forward, including by Sabom himself.

I only began to study NDEs in more depth last year, but I'll recommend a couple of books that I've found particularly helpful so far:

Janice Miner Holden, et al., edd., The Handbook Of Near-Death Experiences (Santa Barbara, California: Praeger Publishers, 2009)

Chris Carter, Science And The Near-Death Experience (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2010)

Neither is written from a Christian perspective, and I have some disagreements with both, but they both provide a lot of valuable information. The first is more of an overview of the field, covering a large number of topics. The second is more focused on arguing for NDEs as evidence of an afterlife, against a materialistic view of NDEs.

If you or anybody else is interested, I've been writing a lot about NDEs at Triablogue over the past several months. There's an archive of those posts here.

Here's something from Carter's book, cited above, that you might be interested in, given your comments on Sabom and the apostle Paul:

"In response to one critic's assertion these scientists [who have researched NDEs] are biased and that near-death research has been influenced by the researchers' beliefs, [Bruce] Greyson [one of the leading near-death researchers] retorted that 'he has it backwards: the researchers' beliefs have been influenced by their consistent research findings. Most near-death researchers did not go into their investigations with a belief in mind-body separation, but came to that hypothesis based on what their research found.' In fact, one researcher, Michael Sabom [who later affirmed the veridicality of near-death experiences], entered the field of NDE research specifically to debunk reports of the NDE." (200)

[Chrawnus]

Chrawnus,

The book by Sabom that you just downloaded is good. It has a lot of valuable information in it. It's somewhat dated, though. Since its publication, further evidence about the Pam Reynolds case has been brought forward, including by Sabom himself.

I only began to study NDEs in more depth last year, but I'll recommend a couple of books that I've found particularly helpful so far:

Janice Miner Holden, et al., edd., The Handbook Of Near-Death Experiences (Santa Barbara, California: Praeger Publishers, 2009)

Chris Carter, Science And The Near-Death Experience (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2010)

Neither is written from a Christian perspective, and I have some disagreements with both, but they both provide a lot of valuable information. The first is more of an overview of the field, covering a large number of topics. The second is more focused on arguing for NDEs as evidence of an afterlife, against a materialistic view of NDEs.

If you or anybody else is interested, I've been writing a lot about NDEs at Triablogue over the past several months. There's an archive of those posts here.

Here's something from Carter's book, cited above, that you might be interested in, given your comments on Sabom and the apostle Paul:

"In response to one critic's assertion these scientists [who have researched NDEs] are biased and that near-death research has been influenced by the researchers' beliefs, [Bruce] Greyson [one of the leading near-death researchers] retorted that 'he has it backwards: the researchers' beliefs have been influenced by their consistent research findings. Most near-death researchers did not go into their investigations with a belief in mind-body separation, but came to that hypothesis based on what their research found.' In fact, one researcher, Michael Sabom [who later affirmed the veridicality of near-death experiences], entered the field of NDE research specifically to debunk reports of the NDE." (200)

Thanks for the information, I'll be sure to check out both the books and the blog posts. I've only just started reading about NDE's, so any helpful information is welcome.