The Science of the "Afterlife"

A recent report indicated that Near-Death Expriences (NDE) have been scientifically studied and documented with some interesting results. Among which are the reported clarity of the memories of those experiencing NDE's such as experience of a bright light at the end of the tunnel and and seeing their bodies from a distance, indicating separation from their corporeal shell.

While NDE's are a valid research in our quest to understand human nature, it would be preposterous, I should say, to assert that experiences of such nature as NDE's are actually attributable to a supernatural reality. Indeed, as the term suggests, NDE's are not equal to death itself, it is merely a condition of lessened mental acuity and activity. In fact, as indicated by CNN, the American Psychological Association defines NDE's as experiences of "profound psychological events with transcendental and mystical elements, typically occurring to individuals close to death or in situations of intense physical or emotional danger." In other words, the person did not in the first place actually die.

Therefore, NDE's being attributed to the existence of the afterlife is nothing more than the experience of physiological stress that hampers the optimum functioning of the brains processing and integrative functions. NDE's are, by the term itself, not equal to and similar to death itself. For death is the total shutdown of all physiologic activity. By far, no person who actually did die, as defined heretofore, and who has been conclusively determined to be so by a panel of experts, and regained again some, most or even all physiologic activity have been identified much less independently confirmed.

These NDE expriences are actually experiences while still having life in the sense that the brain, although at an obviously diminished functioning capacity, but nevertheless still retaining a modicum of electrical activity, is still capable of processing rudimentary physiologic activity.

More research in this field is still needed, but to be even remotely credible, it has to established that death must have been truly present and that there is a confirmable data that a human being really died and came back to life with such experiences.