The more I think about it, the more significant I find the comparison between skeptics and Christians.
In both cases you hear the raw facts being manipulated to try to fit preconceived ideas. The exceptional unpleasant NDE is much more important to Rusty than the majority of pleasant NDE's - and he tries to introduce the idea that unpleasant NDE's somehow get forgotten.
Curiously, the skeptic approach to NDE's seemed to be (in part) to try to show that the patient's imagery came from their religion - because in that way it would not be real - just part of a learned myth. They both want to bend the facts to fit orthodox religion, but for opposite reasons!
I guess there is some interesting psychology at work here. Both groups have built their ideas round a viewpoint that just has to be right. They need to pretend to discuss the data, but heart they just want to scream "I know I am right, and absolutely nothing you say will change my mind!". You could hear the confidence in Rusty's voice when he got on to explaining that he would need a scientific proof that Jesus did not rise from the dead to shake him! He knows full well that there is no way anybody can prove anything so specific from a distance of 2000 years!
David  |