{"id":3807,"date":"2018-10-18T18:25:08","date_gmt":"2018-10-19T01:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=3807"},"modified":"2018-10-18T18:25:08","modified_gmt":"2018-10-19T01:25:08","slug":"steve-taylor-on-ndes-as-trips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=3807","title":{"rendered":"Steve Taylor on NDEs as Trips"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Question from Uriad:<\/strong><br \/>\nLX, I want to know if this sways your beliefs on afterlife.<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.ca\/amp\/s\/www.psychologytoday.com\/ca\/blog\/out-the-darkness\/201810\/near-death-experiences-and-dmt%3famp\">https:\/\/www.google.ca\/amp\/s\/www.psychologytoday.com\/ca\/blog\/out-the-darkness\/201810\/near-death-experiences-and-dmt%3famp<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>\n<strong>Answer by <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/smartlx\">SmartLX<\/a>:<\/strong><br \/>\nWhy would it sway my beliefs?<br \/>\n<br \/>\nWhat we have here is Steve Taylor the psychologist and NDE advocate rejecting the conclusions drawn by a group of psychedelic researchers (from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/articles\/10.3389\/fpsyg.2018.01424\/full\">their study<\/a>, not the psychologist&#8217;s, and he doesn&#8217;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&#8217;s an attempt to eliminate one possible (partial) natural explanation for NDEs, in between plugs for Taylor&#8217;s book on spiritual &#8220;science&#8221;.  This would only advance the case for supernatural NDEs significantly if it were the <em>only possible<\/em> natural explanation, which we can&#8217;t say that it is.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nEven within the scope of what this piece is trying to do, it doesn&#8217;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 <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_psychedelic_drugs\">list<\/a>) 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.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nSo you tell me, why would this sway any skeptic as opposed to merely reassuring believers?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217;s, and he &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=3807\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Steve Taylor on NDEs as Trips&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[561,6],"tags":[827,308,690,828,826],"class_list":["post-3807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-2","category-text","tag-dmt","tag-nde","tag-near-death-experience","tag-psychedelic","tag-steve-taylor"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pB6tr-Zp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3807"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3811,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3807\/revisions\/3811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}