Question from Uriad:
LX, I want to know if this sways your beliefs on afterlife.
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/out-the-darkness/201810/near-death-experiences-and-dmt%3famp
Answer by SmartLX:
Why would it sway my beliefs?
What we have here is Steve Taylor the psychologist and NDE advocate rejecting the conclusions drawn by a group of psychedelic researchers (from their study, not the psychologist’s, and he doesn’t even link to it) on whether a specific psychedelic, DMT, gives experiences akin to near death experiences and therefore a psychedelic state might actually be a part of that experience when it happens. So it’s an attempt to eliminate one possible (partial) natural explanation for NDEs, in between plugs for Taylor’s book on spiritual “science”. This would only advance the case for supernatural NDEs significantly if it were the only possible natural explanation, which we can’t say that it is.
Even within the scope of what this piece is trying to do, it doesn’t get far. It argues that DMT has not been found to occur in the human body in large enough quantities to have this effect; the researchers do not suggest this, but rather that any psychedelic chemical (check the list) might work similarly. It differentiates between NDEs and deliberate psychedelic experiences on the basis of their after-effects, without even trying to separate the effects of the dream/hallucination from the life-altering consequences of almost dying, regardless of the experience at the time.
So you tell me, why would this sway any skeptic as opposed to merely reassuring believers?