'Near death' experiences the result of a spike in brain activity

[DemPGH]

If the brain can hallucinate, which it can, then it can certainly provide a "near death experience." Unless there is direct evidence to the contrary it has to be surmised that these experiences are the results of brain activity. End of story. But that doesn't mean the tests can't reveal interesting things about how the brain works.

As to out of body experiences, they've been testing those for years and decades and never confirmed one. An out of body experience is easier to test than a near death experience, of course, but it's really only a lucid dream or a hallucination. And of course people will see all kinds of crazy stuff.

Assuming the test subject would not cheat, Carl Sagan had proposed years and years ago a standing test: place an object or even the title of a book or a coin in a high back corner shelf, for instance, or a high place, and then at some point when the person has an out of body experience, go check to see what the object is. It would require an honest subject, though. Some folks have some real wild out of body stories, so it shouldn't be too hard to go check what's on the shelf.

[DemPGH]

Sure, drugs and plants can cause people to hallucinate and have all sorts of experiences - which has always been misunderstood in various cultures as a religious experience. It's not.

Related, medication can do the same. Alzheimer's / dementia medication can cause problems like that.

@Kitteh: That's interesting, but my contention is this: let's say we offer two explanations for a thunderstorm. 1) Rising warm air mixing with cool air; 2) Zeus lobbing thunderbolts from his extra dimensional rift. Well, that's kind of what I'm talking about, and I don't have to answer that question. Science works in the physical, and the physical is all there is proof of. So we have a marvelously complex organ in the brain that does all sorts of things, so we have to say that if someone hallucinates, near death or not, the cause is physical / cerebral unless we have proof of Zeus or some other causal agent.

Vaguely related, it seems really strange to me as well that religious / spiritual people think that God would offer someone as sort of an ultimate prize a fleeting image of Himself as a beam of light or whatever, or maybe a glimpse at departed loved ones in their youth, rather than something constructive - an insight, new intelligence, etc. I mean, if God or whatever is going to do one, why not the other as well!? There's got to be something psychological about that.