Nde Q&a

[hoggworks]

Originally Posted by BobSaget

Has anyone on this forum addressed the fact that a good amount of children with NDEs experience a large rise in IQ?

I should also take issue with your calling this a "fact." It doesn't seem to be any such thing. For one thing, part of this "fact" is based on the recollection by adults of childhood experiences which relied on recovered memory as a source of said recollections. Why is that a problem? That there doesn't appear to be any validity to the notion of recovered memory. That strikes me as a red flag.

[BobSaget]

Originally Posted by hoggworks

How would the 277 respondents have responded if they were already dead?

Sorry, I phrased that wrong. She considers the people who were "near death" to be clinically dead at the time, being that their bodies were not functioning. Being that she is a believer, she believes these people went to the "other side," thus she considers them dead while there. I would prefer if she didn't consider them dead because it leads to confusion such as this.

Originally Posted by hoggworks

My point is more that while it might be reasonable to imagine that when an adult with a stable, fully-developed brain goes through an experience and suddenly increases in intelligence, the experience is tied to it, how can you come anywhere near to claiming an event was related to intelligence when the brain is still being formed?

Since the "event" that made them smart happened at the beginning of their lives, how can you distinguish their "normal" intelligence from their "post-NDE" intelligence? How can you say that they wouldn't have been as smart if they hadn't had the NDE? Did each child have an IQ test taken immediately before their NDE?

Based on the paper and its rather large errors, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the author included a "what is your IQ" question in the questionnaire, and took answers given as factual.

The data is saying that 48% of these people were at the genius level. Are you suggesting that it is more likely that there were that many geniuses there by chance? There is a definite correlation, and while correlation is not causation, it is a rather funny coincidence.

Like I said earlier, if anything, I would be skeptical about the tests themselves. If the tests are legitimate, you'd be hard-pressed to say there isn't something going on, whether it be materialistic or not.

[hoggworks]

Originally Posted by BobSaget

Sorry, I phrased that wrong. She considers the people who were "near death" to be clinically dead at the time, being that their bodies were not functioning. Being that she is a believer, she believes these people went to the "other side," thus she considers them dead while there. I would prefer if she didn't consider them dead because it leads to confusion such as this.

Point taken. That would make me then think that the author is confusing "near death" for "dead," but that could be a problem of labels, not of methodology.

The data is saying that 48% of these people were at the genius level. Are you suggesting that it is more likely that there were that many geniuses there by chance? There is a definite correlation, and while correlation is not causation, it is a rather funny coincidence.

Like I said earlier, if anything, I would be skeptical about the tests themselves. If the tests are legitimate, you'd be hard-pressed to say there isn't something going on, whether it be materialistic or not.

I don't know if one becomes a genius "by chance." It feels like a whole lot of postdiction to me, and considering the typos, label problems, and statistical errors, it makes me doubt the rigor with which the author established the intelligence of the participants.

That said, you can certainly find 277 geniuses in the world, and depending on how closely you define "NDE" (as I said before, how can you tell the difference now between a traumatic event and an NDE if the person who went through it has decided it's an NDE? How do you verify that?), I can't imagine it would be hard to do it. At the beginning of the paper, there's this line:

"Of the 277 who qualified,"

By what criteria did someone qualify? I don't see it listed in the paper. Perhaps the qualification is that that they had an IQ of at least 120? You might say that's unlikely, and you could certainly be correct, but I'll go back to a reliance on bad statistics, a carelessness in phrasing, and a reliance on bogus recovered memory on this one. If you don't know how a person qualified, nor how many didn't, nor by what specific standard they were measured as genius, it's really more of a question than an answer, isn't it?

There's also this:
"I do not use the standard double-blind/control group method most professionals do in my research of near-death states because I don't trust it. "

That level of rigor doesn't inspire confidence in either conclusion OR observation. That said, I do agree with the final line of the paper, though for different reasons than I think the author intended:

"Although evidence of an afterlife seems irrefutable in the cases that have emerged; in truth, research on the near-death experience has actually revealed more about life than it has death. "

[hoggworks]

Originally Posted by BobSaget

If the tests are legitimate, you'd be hard-pressed to say there isn't something going on, whether it be materialistic or not.

Indeed I would, but from what I've read, legitimate isn't the first label I'd think to put on the paper.

[Miguel]

Originally Posted by BobSaget

Has anyone on this forum addressed the fact that a good amount of children with NDEs experience a large rise in IQ? I mean, even if NDEs were caused by materialistic means, we should at least figure out how to harness their IQ spiking abilities!

http://www.cinemind.com/atwater/ASPS2007KidNDE.pdf

Just ctrl-F "IQ" to look for the results. I think it starts on the fifth page down.

Wow. That's a horribly bad write-up.
I hope the results were also presented elsewhere in a proper manner.

[Lekatt]

Originally Posted by Occam's chainsaw

But the information there is incorrect and fallacious - its just going around in circles talking nonsense about the brain.....

This has all been discussed here - so perhaps the best strategy would be to read both sources and then realise why that link about is flawed.

The information is not going around in circles.

Please show some evidence of why you say this.

[Rod McKenzie]

Hi Lekatt,
Some questions, if that’s ok?

Q1. How do you know your NDE wasn’t a hallucination /dream?

Q2. The idea put forward by our skeptical contributors, I think, is that memory of the NDE is actually “built up” over time. Can you speak to this?

Q3. How do you know it was a glimpse of the afterlife?

Q4. Is boredom a factor? (as Paul scoffs ) What do people do?

Q5. Eternity? Did you get any information about duration? Is there actually time there?

Q6. Sometimes skeptics can get quite belligerent when their viewpoint is challenged. Have you been subject to any nastiness? If so, can you relate instances?

Q7. Had you learned about NDEs prior to your experience? Did you see what you expected?

Q8.Did you see a being of light? If so, who did you interpret it to be? Why?

Q9. Were there any veridical elements to the NDE.?

Rod McKenzie

[Lekatt]

Originally Posted by Rod McKenzie

Hi Lekatt,
Some questions, if that’s ok?

Q1. How do you know your NDE wasn’t a hallucination /dream?

Q2. The idea put forward by our skeptical contributors, I think, is that memory of the NDE is actually “built up” over time. Can you speak to this?

Q3. How do you know it was a glimpse of the afterlife?

Q4. Is boredom a factor? (as Paul scoffs ) What do people do?

Q5. Eternity? Did you get any information about duration? Is there actually time there?

Q6. Sometimes skeptics can get quite belligerent when their viewpoint is challenged. Have you been subject to any nastiness? If so, can you relate instances?

Q7. Had you learned about NDEs prior to your experience? Did you see what you expected?

Q8.Did you see a being of light? If so, who did you interpret it to be? Why?

Q9. Were there any veridical elements to the NDE.?

Rod McKenzie

Q1. Hallucinations and dreams are not clear and organized, nor do they impart knowledge that can be tested accurately in the physical world. It is ludicrous to compare hallucinations to near death experiences.

Q2. You can't "bulid up" what you have never experienced. Near death experiences impart new knowledge to the experiencer, which is the reason the experience totally changes the life and perception of the experiencer. Near death experiences actually cause a profound change in the beliefs of the experiencer.

Q3. Most NDEers feel they are home, as I did, you know you have been there before. You realize and remember that you are an eternal being and the physical is only temporary for learning purposes.

Q4. Hardly, there is more to do and learn and explore in the spiritual world than there ever could be in the limited physical world.

Q5. Yes, there is no time or space in the physical world. We are conscious energy. No beginning and no end.

Q6. I have been posting on skeptical boards for years. I've been called everything from mildly retarded to totally insane. and all point in between. Skeptics are not knowledgeable in near death experiences. Most can't even discuss the broad elements of one. They read the literature from other skeptics and never the material from experiencers. They just don't know what they are discussing. My postings on skeptical boards start off ok, but as I begin to show the research links and studies which they have no counter the belligerence comes out quickly. Then the personal attacks become the only answers to my posts. On the last board I was told by the moderators that I couldn't post any more links to research or studies because they were flawed. It wasn't because they were flawed but because they had nothing to counter them. The research was done by qualified scientists working in qualified universities and published in scientific journals. The last link I posted was The AfterEffect, pg2, Pam Reynolds | Thoughtful Living Skeptics said this link was not science, it was not verified, and the doctor was a friend and fan of the experiencer.

Q7. I had not heard of NDEs before I had one, if fact it was some time before I learned other people had them and what they were called.

Q8. In my original experience I didn't see the being, I was held by the being and knew beyond any doubt he was there. In subsequent experiences I have seen many beings of light, have some pictures of them on my site. The main light being I encountered, the brightest light I saw as Jesus, but others in the group saw the being as Allah or Buddha. We see the main ones as what we have been taught, actually they have no names, none necessary. Friends and loved ones are seen as they were in the physical only younger.

Q9. No, not to others. But to me there were many things I have learned and "tested" in the physical world and found to be true. It took me over three years to integrate my experience with living in the physical. Some unfortunately never integrate their experience and become somewhat cloistered from the world. I am aware of veridical experiences being collected by researchers like Dr. Bruce Grayson of Virginia University. I have a video on Him at
Dr. Bruce Greyson at the UN | Thoughtful Living

I hope this is of some help.

I would like to add an article I wrote that is gaining popularity on the net.

http://www.aleroy.com/blog/?p=298

[Rod McKenzie]

Hi Lekatt,
Thanks for the detailed reply.
Not sure if I believe it, but hey, if true, I’ll have some fun sticking it to Skeptics.

Rod McKenzie

[Lekatt]

Originally Posted by Rod McKenzie

Hi Lekatt,
Thanks for the detailed reply.
Not sure if I believe it, but hey, if true, I’ll have some fun sticking it to Skeptics.

Rod McKenzie

It's true.

Not important to me if skeptics believe or not, but very important to them.
Some day they will get it, can change lives for the better.