gays and tattoos

(Above image taken from this site)

To be fair, it’s possible that Leviticus 19:28 is referring to a nearby idolatrous “pagan” practice of tattooing oneself at funerals to obtain postmortem favors, in which case the man in the picture is not being an ironic hypocrite. Some try to argue that Leviticus 18:22 is similarly culturally limited with (in my judgment) varying degrees of success.

But, for now, let’s forget about all of that. My interest in the picture goes much further than the verses in question. What I find more disturbing (and also more interesting) is that many people sincerely believe that Leviticus and the rest of the “Old Testament” books truly and unequivocally dictate the will of God without exception and that is what I will focus on here. Many people sincerely believe that God -- the Ground of Being/ that which all of reality (apart from that Ground of Being itself) is completely reducible to and dependent upon-- actually uttered the words that are attributed to “him” by the authors of Leviticus, Deuteronomy, etc.

I assume the man in the picture holds that view, or at least something close to it. (If not, no worries. He inspired me to reflect on the issues I raise below, but one needn't apply the issues to that man.) If so, I wonder if he would be willing to get a tattoo of one or more of the following:

    (1) Leviticus 20:18, which forbids men from having sex with women who are on their periods. It may seem gross, but I know many Christian men who oppose same-sex eroticism but have nevertheless had sex with a woman during menstruation and intend to do it again.

   (2) 1 Samuel 15:2-3, which quotes God as telling the Israelites to 

attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, CHILDREN AND INFANTS, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys[!]

This text could not be any more barbaric than it already is. To make sure we get the picture, God (through the author) tells them to kill the “infants” too. And, for some reason, God didn’t like their camels or donkeys either. Please note that this vicious military order (according to the text itself) came from God himself. Either the author was right or he was wrong; there’s no middle ground here. If the author was wrong – if God did not tell the Israelites to murder innocent infants – then this text does not reflect the will of God. Which is it? 

    (3) 2 Kings 2:23-24, in which Elisha curses 42 children “in the name of the Lord”, which results in two bears appearing and tearing the children “to pieces”. Why did the two bears butcher those children “in the name of the lord”? According to the text, it’s because the children were mocking Elisha for being bald...   


   (4) 2 Samuel 12:11-14, which quotes God as threatening to take David’s wives and hand them over to his “neighbor”, who will then “lie with” David’s wives “in broad daylight.” Please note that the text quotes God himself.

    (5) Exodus 31:14, which demands the death penalty for anybody who “worked on the Sabbath” (“Keep the Sabbath holy. You have six days to do your work, but the Sabbath is mine, and it must remain a day of rest. If you work on the Sabbath, you will no longer be part of my people, and you will be put to death.”) In other words, relax and take a break or else I will kill you...

    (6) Deut 21:18-21, which commands parents to have their consistently disobedient sons murdered out in the open by “all the men of the city”. Here’s the passage:

 If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

Forget Rescue Nanny 911. If your bratty son won’t listen to you, eh, just have your neighbors murder him by smashing him with rocks. That way you can “purge evil from your midst”.

    (7) Deut 22:13-21, which commanded the Israelites to murder women who weren’t virgins when they got married. Even worse, it was supposed to take place right in front of “the door of her father’s house”! On the other hand, if husband’s accusation is false – if the woman really was a virgin when they got married— then the husband must pay the woman’s father “a hundred shekels of silver”.

    (8) etc.

I don’t get any pleasure out of flaunting these darker passages. Instead, my point is that many people who mindlessly use the OT as a weapon against gay human beings seem unaware of what else the OT says.

 Many people really believe that the creator and source of time itself and the cosmic engineer who “finely tuned” the “constants” of physics and sparked inflation --and perhaps also the creator of countless other space-time manifolds-- actually inspired all of the aforementioned passages. The anti-gay verse of Leviticus 20:13 is bad enough, but people should also be talking about all of the many other nasty passages and commandments in the Hebrew scriptures.

To be fair, there is no logical inconsistency between the proposition “God exists” (if we go by a minimal definition of “God”), on the one hand, and the idea that the OT texts unequivocally dictate the will of God without exception, on the other hand. I just want people to be aware of what that actually entails. It would make God petty and every bit as nasty as some of the war criminals and tyrants many Christians so love to despise. I’ll end by quoting a passage from the 2006 book “The God Delusion” by the zoologist Richard Dawkins:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.*

 (* For the record, I give “The God Delusion” 5 out of 10 stars and feel that it’s overrated in terms of its contributions to the philosophy of religion. I just get some guilty pleasure out of this passage from the book because it’s so eloquent and neatly-worded. It’s even fun to read aloud)

I hate that political identities can be so polarizing and misleading. There are republicans and democrats who hold views that the other side might be expected to have. For example, there are democrats who oppose same-sex marriage and republicans who favor it, democrats who oppose the legalization of marijuana and republicans who favor it, etc. It seems better to avoid political labels altogether and just discuss issues one at a time, although that wouldn’t be convenient at times when brevity is expected. Here’s a sample: I passionately support gay rights across the board (e.g. same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples), I believe healthcare is a right and that we ought to have a universal healthcare system, I think marijuana should be legalized (not just de-criminalized) and possibly taxed, I strongly oppose the teaching of creationism in public school, I support stem cell research, and I even think prostitution should be legalized and maybe taxed (which doesn’t mean I would ever make use of it!). Taken together, are those positions enough to give me the label of “liberal” or “progressive”? I usually identify as one of those, but for some people those labels imply an excessive disdain for anything /everything resembling the military and soft treatment of dangerous criminals. But despite the stereotype about liberals, I’m also fascinated by guns and the military and I strongly support military action in some circumstances. I think we ought to use violent military force against terrorists who pour acid over the faces of children, who blow up children, who publicly mutilate and beat defenseless women, who behead innocent people (sometimes by slowly sawing through their necks!), etc. We generally can’t reason with people who are so irrationally violent, and I support the use of force against them. Does that sentiment disqualify me from being “liberal”? 

Similarly, for some people, identifying as “republican” conjures up images of irrational religious bigots who do everything they can do oppress gays and support evil corporations. But there are self-identified republicans who support same-sex marriage, or support universal healthcare, or support the legalization of marijuana, etc.

We can’t assume that we have an adequate grasp of somebody’s political views just because they merely identify as “republican”, or “democrat”, or “conservative”, or “liberal”, etc.  And I haven’t yet mentioned or discussed “independents”, “libertarians”, etc.

There are similar problems with identifying as “religious”, “spiritual”, “Christian”, “Jewish”, “mystical”, “atheist”, “agnostic”, etc. To make it more complicated, political and religious identities often overlap with each other and political views often stem from certain religious views. And here there are also cases that we wouldn’t expect if we just went by stereotypes. There are some examples: some republicans are atheists, some democrats are evangelical Christians, some Christians are fiercely against teaching creationism or Intelligent Design (ID) in public school, some atheists favor ID being taught in public school (seriously!), some Christians deny an immediate afterlife (continuation of consciousness after brain death), some atheists believe in an immediate afterlife, etc.

Of course, those examples don’t exhaust the possibilities.  So I guess what I’m saying is that people are more interesting and nuanced than our everyday style of communication would have us believe. Let’s try to learn more and assume less. Rant over. KAPAW!

Gerry Woerlee VS Chris Carter Again

Chris Carter recently re-released his excellent 2007 book “Parapsychology and the Skeptics” under the new title of “Science and Psychic Phenomena: The Fall of the House of Skeptics”. Well-known skeptic Gerry Woerlee posted a scathing review of the book here (after posting a scathing review of Carter’s book on NDEs, which I discussed here).


Gerry did not address the majority of the book’s actual arguments, so I replied to his review in the comment section here  (under the name C Casanova, even though my first name is Patrick… I don’t know how to fix that).


Gerry replied to me here


I replied back here

 

I haven’t received any additional replies from Gerry, but several other people continued the discussion.

The Man Who Doesn't Contact The Dead

Psychological illusionist and psi-skeptic Derren Brown investigated alleged medium Joe Power in a T.V. special called "The Man Who Contacts The Dead":

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5


Click here if you live in the U.K. and can't watch the Youtube videos.

I was disappointed that Joe Power refused to do the testing that Brown and Richard Wiseman suggested. His rationale was that he needs live interaction with the sitters, which is extremely suspicious. He's saying that he can't get good results unless he's in a situation where cold and warm readings can be done. Perhaps he means that he just needs some relevant human interaction. If that's the case, then why not use proxy sitters? Stranger X (who doesn't know anything about Y) could sit in for Y, although Y would still have to be largely unknown to Joe Power for the experiment to be worth doing. But I suspect that he would decline to do proxy sittings as well.

My impression is that Power is a fraud (and also kind of a jerk), but my opinion would change if he's able to reliably produce intimate hits under controlled conditions.

[Updated 3/7/15 for accuracy]

In 2010, Chris Carter published a book called “Science and the Near Death Experience”, which argues for the survivalist interpretation of NDEs. I briefly reviewed it here. IMO, it’s a great book, though not perfect (I made several criticisms, which could and should be elaborated on... I’ll get around to it at some point. Although, to be fair, Carter is releasing an updated version of his book that covers more issues).

Recently, skeptic Gerald Woerlee posted a rather scathing critique on Amazon. I would like to address some of Woerlee’s criticisms (only some since Carter has already replied). But I want to say two things before doing so:

First, in my judgment, the evidence for paranormality in the best medium cases is much stronger than the evidence for paranormality in the best NDE cases (which is a shame because I think NDE cases could have greater potential for resisting the “super-psi” alternative if the evidence for veridicality were stronger). As I see it, the evidence for paranormality in the best NDE cases has been exaggerated. I currently think that the survivalist interpretation is the best fit, but not by much. Future studies/ arguments could change my opinion in either direction.

Second, in this post, I’m not going to address Woerlee’s critique of Carter’s section on veridical observations (the discussion on Pam Reynolds, “flapping his arms”, and the missing dentures case). I’ll let Carter do that. Carter has posted a two-part reply on Amazon here and here (I expect follow up replies from Woerlee, and them some from Carter, etc.). Also, his book will be re-released in a revised edition that will include a whole section on Gerald Woerlee. I previously complained that the book did not even mention Woerlee, but the revised edition will fortunately do much more than simply mention him.

So that said, here’s my brief response to Woerlee’s review.

We read that: "The theory of production is therefore not a jot more simple or credible in itself than any other conceivable theory. It is only a little more popular."(K555). Does the author mean to tell us that materialism is more popular than dualism? Strange... Studies show that about 70% of people believe the soul is the source of consciousness

First, Carter is quoting William James. Second, James was talking about the popularity of the production theory among the scientists of his day. Even today, it seems to be more popular within the neuroscience community. Dualism does seem to have more support in the general population, but Carter has never challenged that. Woerlee misunderstood the point.

This brings us to the matter of enhanced mental processes reported by NDE-ers. At location K4162, just as throughout this book, he says that materialism cannot explain the phenomenon of enhanced conscious awareness. But no figures are presented telling us that enhanced conscious awareness occurs in between 19% (Lommel 2001) to 75% (Jeffrey Long 2010) of NDE experiences, (depending upon definition and type of NDE study). This means it is in no way a universal feature of NDEs. Therefore to call this a true manifestation of the unfettered conscious mind is poor logic

Enhanced mentation is often seen in NDEs that occur after the onset of cardiac arrest, which destroys measurable brain activity in under 60 seconds after onset due to a dramatic DEcrease in the flow of blood, oxygen, and nutrients to the brain. If the brain can produce consciousness in that state, it seems reasonable to expect it to be fragmented and negligible. Instead, NDEs that occur after the onset of cardiac arrest often include a dramatic INcrease in mentation – in the speed and quality of thoughts, in control over one’s thoughts, in visual and auditory acuity, in memory, and in the feeling of “reality” itself. This is basically a much more extreme version of what happens to a person who has been knocked out via a blood choke, which pinches the arteries feeding the brain. If a person is able to recall anything from the experience of a 10-second blood choke (if it were applied correctly), then it would be fragmented and dimmed bits of information with gaps in awareness and an incoherent narrative. And that is only a fraction of what happens to the brain after cardac arrest, and NDEs after cardiac arrest often include the aforementioned increase in cognition.

Woerlee objects by pointing out that this enhanced mentation is “in no way a universal feature of NDEs”. I don’t see why that is relevant. Veridical perception is also not universal, but it needs to be noted when (or if) it ever happens. Likewise, we should also note increased mental capacities at a time when they should be negligible or absent. But even when the mental capacities are not enhanced during the NDE, they are typically at least as potent as they are during ordinary waking consciousness (as opposed to the dim and fragmented consciousness typically seen in dreams). The vast majority of NDErs report either enhanced cognition or the same degree of ordinary waking cognition,* even when (on conventional models) we should expect it to be negligible or absent. That’s important.

(* By “ordinary waking consciousness”, I mean the following: The consciousness that healthy people experience after a good night of sleep, without the foggy effects of antihistamines or alcohol, etc. That level of cognition is typically the LEAST that is found in NDEs, and often the cognition is enhanced, even after the onset of cardiac arrest.)

Also, cardiac arrest victims who have NDEs are able to describe the details of their own resuscitation more accurately than victims who lack NDEs. Whether that is indicative of postmortem survival is an open question in my judgment. I haven’t completely made up my mind one way or the other about NDEs. One could suggest a role for heart massage in generating imagery because it would lead to cerebral perfusion. Regarding this suggestion, Long states, “Cardiac arrest NDErs commonly report ongoing earthly events well beyond the first 10-20 seconds following cardiac arrest. If OBE observations during a NDE generally began only during the time cardiac massage (CPR) began, then it would be reasonable to assume CPR had something to do with OBE observations and NDEs. But that is not what is observed. NDEs and the OBE observations typically begin at the moment of cardiac arrest and prior to initiation of CPR.”

[...] he invokes the very unproven "morphic fields" of Sheldrake to "prove" that memory is extracorporeal.

I agree that much more should have been said in support of Sheldrake’s ideas on morphic resonance and fields, which are controversial enough that they should be discussed with more depth. Either way, as I see it, Carter is not using Sheldrake’s ideas to “prove” that memories are extra-cerebral (i.e. that the brain tunes into memories rather that storing them within its tissues). Rather, I think he is trying to help readers conceptualize what it would mean for memories to be extra-cerebral. Part 1 of the book seems to be mostly conceptual ground work. But that said, Carter also argues that the idea of memory traces has no evidence whatsoever. He points out that some scientists react to this by suggesting that memory seems to be “both everywhere and nowhere in particular”. Since Sheldrake’s hypothesis is more directly testable, and since it does have some evidence supporting it (Woerlee fails to mention that Carter cites Ertel's examination of the relevant studies), Carter suggests that it’s more scientific. But Carter isn’t saying that Sheldrake’s hypothesis has been proven absolutely true.

Quantum mechanics is often invoked as an explanation for anything not understood by all believers in the immaterial nature of the conscious mind. The reasoning apparently goes; "If you cannot explain it, throw in some quantum mechanical magic." This book is no exception.

I’m ambivalent on quantum models of mind-brain interaction. It’s not my area of expertise. But I have two problems with Woerlee’s dismissal.

First, Carter discusses the work of actual physicists (including Henry Stapp*), who are most certainly not saying “we can’t explain it so therefore we should appeal to quantum physics”. Woerlee’s dismissal of this section is very disappointing because he didn’t even scratch the surface of the actual ideas put forth. Why not address Stapp’s actual arguments?

(* In personal email communication with me, the Nobel Laureate Brian Josephson described Stapp’s model as “insightful” and containing “many aspects of the truth”. Josephson’s web site can be found here).

Second, Woerlee insinuates that the majority of physicists don’t agree with Stapp’s model. But Woerlee of all people must be aware that majority vote doesn’t automatically equal truth; the majority of NDE researchers disagree with Woerlee by accepting the survival interpretation and the majority of parapsychologists think that psi phenomena are real, and yet Woerlee denies both postmortem survival and the existence of psi phenomena. So his use of majority vote in this case is hypocritical.

Then a last bit of nit-picking. At K4675, Chris Carter ends the description of another seemingly remarkable case study with the words: "The skeptic must say that the dying person telepathically or
clairvoyantly gains true information about a recently deceased friend or relative, ..." I find this a remarkable statement. A skeptic with knowledge of body structure and function also rejects the concepts of telepathy and clairvoyance. These are paranormal sensory abilities which the experiences of the blind, the deaf, and gambling casinos teach us simply do not exist.

I have several things to say here.

First, Woerlee appears to be unaware of a whole class of afterlife-skeptics; there are afterlife-skeptics who invoke psychic functioning among living persons to discount the proposed evidence for an afterlife. That debate has been going since the early days of the British and American Societies for Psychical Research. THAT is what Carter is referring to here. Here’s how the reasoning goes: If we assume postmortem survival, and if persons can communicate and “see” in the afterlife, then (since they no longer have conventional bodies) they would have to be using telepathy (for communication) and clairvoyance (for “vision”). So the very idea of postmortem survival requires telepathy and clairvoyance. But if we’re going to grant the existence of those psi phenomena, then we could argue that LIVING people use those psi capacities to mimic the appearance of survival to satisfy their emotional needs. This objection is often called “super-psi”, but out of respect for Stephen Braude and Michael Sudduth, I prefer calling it the Living Agent Psi Hypothesis – or LAP.

For clarity, here’s another example of the LAP objection. Let’s suppose that I visit a medium in another country and I hire a stranger (who knows nothing about me) to sit in for me. Now let’s say that the medium tells the stranger,

You are sitting in for Patrick. Patrick loves rum, in particular Captain Morgan’s Tattoo and Lime Bite. Patrick shoots his teammates in video games, particularly in a game about shooting zombies. Patrick used to work in a restaurant where he turned down an offer to be a supervisor.

Those claims are all correct. For the sake of argument, let’s say we can rule out fraud. In that case, what is the best interpretation? The medium claims that the information came from spirits that are communicating with him. A survivalist would agree with the medium’s interpretation and say that the medium is communicating with a non-embodied mind (a “spirit”). On the other hand, a LAP proponent would say that mediums have genuine psychic abilities that overlap with Schizophrenic-like tendencies and/or secondary personalities and that is why they think dead people are communicating with them. A survivalist may object by arguing that we have no reason to suppose the existence of such highly refined psi functioning. But, ironically, the survivalist interpretation presupposes the existence of highly refined psi functioning. If a spirit can clearly communicate information about be to the medium, then that would be refined telepathy. If a spirit can “see” what I’m doing (when I shoot teammates in video games), then that would be refined clairvoyance. So we have to assume the existence of refined psi if we affirm the survivalist interpretation. But then, why not attribute the refined psi to living people who are using it to mimic the appearance of survival in order to satisfy their emotional needs? That is the dispute that Carter was referring to.

Interestingly, even the famous trance medium Leonora Piper herself preferred the LAP interpretation. Her entire “confession”, as it was falsely described, has been reproduced here. Piper said,

I am inclined to accept the telepathic explanation […] I must truthfully say that I do not believe that spirits of the dead have spoken through me when I have been in the trance state.

Again, that is the debate Carter was talking about when he said that some “skeptics” invoke psychic abilities to discount postmortem survival. In previous entries I recommended several sources on Piper, including those that deal with evidence for psi capacities and problems with skeptical objections. Here’s a partial list: Hodgson, R. (1892) “A record of Observations of Certain Phenomena of Trance”, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, volume 8, pages 1-167; Hodgson, R. (1898) “A Further Record of Observations of Certain Phenomena of Trance”, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, volume 13, pages 284-582 (both Hodgson papers can be read in PDF format here); Sage, M. (1904) “Mrs. Piper and the Society for Psychical Research”, re-released in 2009 by Cornell University Library (here); and Greg Taylor’s rebuttal to Martin Gardner here.

Second, Carter’s second book cited his first book, which offers a strong case for the existence of some psi phenomena (although it unfortunately left out some relevant evidence). Carter also contributed a good case to the recent volume “Debating Psychic Experience” (edited by Krippner and Friedman, 2010... Michael Prescott’s review of Carter’s chapter can be found here). If someone is going to argue against psi phenomena in general, then they need to deal with the strongest arguments that have been made. To start, Woerlee should read and write a thorough review of Carter’s first book. Knowledgeable readers know that quick dismissals of psi phenomena are inappropriate given all of the studies (both within and outside of the lab) and articles by investigators such as Richard Hodgson (cited earlier), Richard Broughton, Oliver Lodge, Fred Myers, Stephen Braude (cited earlier), Michael Sudduth (cited earlier), Dean Radin, Dick Bierman, Charles Honorton, Leanna Standish, Marilyn Schlitz, etc. Woerlee does not mention the the highly detailed and intimate hits by Leonora Piper under fraud-resistant conditions over a period of many years (see sources listed earlier), EEG and fMRI correlation studies (listed here), Ganzfeld debate between Honorton and Hyman, the Ganzfled analysis by Tressoldi et al. (here), the critiques of Milton and Wiseman's Ganzfeld paper (e.g. here, here, and Carter's first book), Sheldrake's telepathy work (here), etc. Of course, there have been many back-and-forth exchanges on these issues. My point is that Woerlee ignores all of those issues and acts as if there is no evidence at all. But the data and the debates surrounding them shouldn’t be glibly brushed aside by appealing to casinos and blind/deaf people, which brings me to my next point.

Third, apart from the fact that Woerlee dismissed (and failed to even mention!) dozens of well-conducted studies,he also offered a poor argument. In the case of casinos, I assume his reasoning goes like this (to paraphrase):

if people actually do possess telepathic/clairvoyant/psychokinetic/precognitive abilities, then they would use those abilities to beat casinos. Casinos generally beat their customers (the only way to stay in business), and so those abilities must not exist.

This objection has three problems with it. (A) If psi functions exist, then casino customers may be subconsciously competing with each other and with the casino employees (who probably want the casino to stay in business), and so there may be a canceling-out effect. That is at least a possibility. (B) In the history of parapsychology, only a few individuals have had (or have been alleged to have) dramatic abilities, including Leonora Piper (alleged telepathy and clairvoyance) and Daniel Home (alleged psychokinesis). But the vast majority of subjects generally produce weak effects or none at all. Many can pick up a guitar, but only a few can be like Kurt Cobain. (C) Among general subjects, effects seem to be stronger between people with emotional bonds. Casino customers usually don’t have an emotional bond with the casino employees, and certainly not with inanimate objects at the casino. (Regarding the latter, I should note that while the RNG effects are statistically significant, they’re also extremely weak and not what we’d expect if somebody wanted to psychically beat a casino.)

Regarding the argument from blind/deaf people, I’m not sure what Woerlee is getting at. My guess is the following: he thinks that if psychic abilities exist, then they would manifest in blind/deaf people as compensation, and they would do so in such a way that blind people could navigate without bumping into things and deaf people would be able to know what others are talking about. But why suppose that? Whether such abilities actually exist is an empirical question; we can’t deny (or affirm) their existence on the basis of whether they appear to conform to our presuppositions. And as I said earlier, most subjects produce weak effects most of the time (with a few exceptions), and usually not the kind of dramatic effects we see in movies.

Woerlee continues:

Carter is preaching to his own parish, because there is disappointingly little true science to be found in this book

That’s a hugely exaggerated claim. Among other things, Carter discusses the relevance of physics to consciousness studies (p. 32-80), which includes a summary of contemporary physics vs classical physics, quantum models of mind-brain relationship (which involves the work of actual physicists such as Henry Stapp), and a discussion on the “dreaded interaction problem”; he cites experiments on animals in which portions of their brains are removed (p 84-86); he summarizes studies on the features of NDEs (p. 108-126); he discusses studies on cross-cultural similarities and differences among NDEs in China, India, Native America, Guam, and Maori New Zealand (p. 136-149); and he carefully evaluates many of the non-survivalist models by Blackmore, Persinger, etc. by discussing scientifically-ascertained facts (p. 150-215). Readers should find all of these helpful, even if they end up disagreeing with Carter’s conclusions on the origins/nature of NDEs. It is wildly false and irresponsible to claim that there is “little science” in Carter’s book. This is just a condensed and inadequate summary of the science in Carter’s book. I highly recommend that people check it out for themselves.