I’ve been thinking with Keith Augustine on supposed survival after death that some claim for mediums, Out of Body Experiences, and Near-Death experiences. Gregory Shushan  (“Diversity and Similarity of Near-Death Experiences across Cultures and History: Implications for the Survival Hypothesis“)  claims Augustine makes an error regarding NDEs. Shushan writes:

• Some critics fall back on Karl Popper’s ‘promissory materialism’, maintaining that whatever might eventually be revealed by cross-cultural NDEs will inevitably reinforce a scientific materialist explanation (Greyson, Citation2007, p. 142). This is exemplified by Augustine’s (Citation2007, p. 116) statement that if NDEs prove to be universal, they ‘would be best explained in neuroscientific terms’. However, as seen above, the mere fact of universality specifies neither a metaphysical nor a neuroscientific conclusion. Furthermore, as Greyson (Citation2007, p. 142) noted, models of NDEs as either hallucinatory or transcendental create a false dichotomy, for their phenomenology suggests ‘that some NDE features may well be linked to physiological events, some to sociopsychological belief, and others to no known materialist cause’.

Augustine responds that Shushan has created a weak representation of his position for the sake of knocking it down easily. But this is not Augustine’s position. Augustine responds:

• He is suggesting that my argument is:

1. If NDEs have universal features, then there is a neuroscientific
explanation for NDEs.

2. NDEs have universal features.
3. Therefore, there is a neuroscientific explanation for NDEs.

But I never argue any such thing. In particular, I don’t hold up
universality as evidence FOR neuroscientific explanation (as Shushan
explicitly claims that I do). It is other features of NDEs, taken as a
whole, that make a neuroscientific explanation of NDEs better than
purely psychological ones (should NDEs have specific universal features
cross-culturally, which appears counterfactual anyway) or spiritual
ones. Universal features would need to be considered in light of other
features, with the other features being ones difficult to reconcile with
spiritual explanations (e.g., false predictions of future events).

You’ll never see my argument here preceded by the ‘if’ statement that if NDE features (alone) are
universal, that (alone) indicates a neuroscientific explanation.

I never claimed that universality alone rules out or makes improbable a spiritual explanation–and I don’t see how an argument could be made that it does. By itself, universality is at best alternatively explained, not better explained, by neuroscience. It’s the other features combined with it that would make it the better explanation, so neuroscience would provide a better explanation even if that universality were not there (which tends to be where I lean throughout the chapter anyway).

Augustine notes:

Given that at least some NDEs are known to be hallucinations (Augustine 2007), should future cross-cultural studies uncover universal and well-defined NDE elements, such precise widespread commonalities would be best explained in neuroscientific terms.  Alternatively, if extensive studies fail to uncover substantial cross-cultural consistency between NDE accounts, a sociological explanation for solely Western commonalities would be required.  (“See Augustine’s original words here)

Also see Keith’s recent interview with Dale Glover of Real Seekers Ministries: