Near death experiences as purported evidence of a soul

At AlterNet, Greta Christina has written an article titled, "Why Near-Death Experiences Are a Flimsy Justification for the Idea That We Have Immortal Souls." She argues that the evidence supporting the independent soul is "unfalsifiable."

[It] is flimsy at best. It is unsubstantiated. It comes largely from personal anecdotes. It is internally inconsistent. . . . The evidence supporting the "independent soul" explanation is flimsy at best. It is unsubstantiated. It comes largely from personal anecdotes. It is internally inconsistent. It is shot through with discrepancies. It is loaded with biases and cognitive errors -- especially confirmation bias, the tendency to exaggerate evidence that confirms what we already believe, and to ignore evidence that contradicts it. It has methodological errors that a sixth-grade science project winner could spot in 10 seconds. And that includes the evidence of near-death experiences. There is not a single account of an immaterial soul leaving the body in a near-death experience that meets the gold standard of scientific evidence. Not even close.
Christina bristles at the believer argument that scientists are "biased." Yes, they are, but not in the way that many believers argue:
Scientists are human, too: they don't want to die, and they'd be just as happy as anyone to learn that they were going to live forever.
Christina also points out that the trauma of near death is an altered brain state that can account for any altered perception:
Weird things often happen to people's minds during altered states of consciousness. Exhaustion, stress, distraction, trance-like repetition, optical illusion, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, sensory overload... any of these physical changes to the brain, and more, can create vivid "perceptions" that are entirely disconnected from reality. It's been extensively demonstrated. And being near death is an altered state of consciousness, a physical change to the brain.
I agree with Christina's arguments. I would extend them to those who suggest that they can give accurate accounts of what it is like to have a stroke, relying solely on introspection.

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Desiring God

At Daylight Atheism, Ebonmuse points out how odd it is that the God of the Bible allegedly desires certain things (e.g., he likes sacrifices). But, as Ebonmuse explains, it should strike us as odd that the creator of the universe would have desires:

The belief that God wants and desires certain things is a common thread in monotheism. But when you think about it, this is a profoundly strange belief. Most theists don't recognize this, but that's because the analogy between God and human beings masks the strangeness of it. After all, we all understand how, and why, human beings come to hold certain desires. We have instinctual physiological drives, installed in us by evolution, for basic things like food, sex and companionship. We have more complex desires as a result of culture, upbringing and past experience for things that we think will add to our happiness or help fulfill the more basic desires. Every one of us has gone through a long, complex and contingent process of development that shaped our likes and dislikes. But God, so we're told, is eternal and unchanging. He is pure reason, pure mind, pure spirit - no physical needs to fulfill, no past history, none of the contingent events that make human nature what it is. So how is it that he has, just like us, a complex nature with specific likes and dislikes?
The post is somewhat tongue-in-cheek , but Ebonmuse makes a serious point that theists really should confront, but they never actually do confront it. Instead, they concoct "souls" and "spirits." I would spin the issue this way. All desires, many of which stem from emotions, are associated with bodies. Without a body, there cannot be any emotion and thus there cannot be any form of craving or desire. There isn't a jot of evidence that there has ever been any thought in the absence of a body. Further, there is no such thing as free-standing self-sufficient meaning; there is no such thing as meaning independent of a physical body; all meaning is embodied. I know that many believers would find my conclusions to be disturbing, but this is the direction I am turned when I rely upon the (expansive) scientific view of what it means to be a human animal (and see this entire category).

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Why it matters that humans are animals.

I have written numerous posts advocating that because humans are animals they should be recognized as such (for example, see here , here, here , and here). For zoologists and others who study animals, it is obviously true that we are animals. We do hundreds of things that the other mammals do, plus a few extra. You can see it every day when you eat, breathe, emote, poop, become fatigued and fall asleep. Yet millions of Americans are horrified by the thought that human beings are animals. Consider that we aren’t simply animals. Our species is a carefully defined type of animal. We are apes. Frans de Waal explains:

Darwin wasn't just provocative in saying that we descend from the apes—he didn't go far enough . . . We are apes in every way, from our long arms and tailless bodies to our habits and temperament.

If you want even more detail on what type of animal humans are (we are in the ape sub-division of primates), watch this brisk video by Aron-ra. Again, this sort of information is really disturbing to many people, especially religious conservatives. So why don't I simply leave religious conservatives alone? Why do I persist on standing on rooftops and proclaiming this message that humans are animals? Why don't I just whisper this sort of information only to my closest of friends: "Pssst. Human beings are animals." Why don't I just let it be, and keep it all to myself? What could possibly be at stake that I feel compelled to spread the word that human beings are animals? I was in the process of assembling my own list when I just happened to read Chapter 12 of Mark Johnson's new book, The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding. Johnson is well known for his work with metaphors and embodied cognition with George Lakoff. Chapter 12 of his new book contains a section that leaped out at me: "The Philosophical Implications of the Embodied Mind." In that short section, Johnson sets forth nine reasons why it really and truly matters for people to acknowledge that they are animals and to fully accept that their minds are embodied, not free-floating entities independent of physical laws. Johnson's biggest target is the "objectivist theory of meaning," the idea that meaning "gets defined without any connection to the experience of the creature (i.e., the human) for whom the words are meaningful. Johnson points out that those who follow the objectivist theory of meaning believe that words and sentences somehow "carry" meaning without even trying to explain how words and sentences ever come to acquire meaning. It should send up immediate red flags that the predominate theory of meaning relies on floating thoughts, a theory of meaning that is not biologically anchored. Reacting to (and rejecting) this objectivist approach, Mark Johnson premises his analysis "with a mind that is not separate from or out-of-ongoing-contact with its body and its world." His worldview includes a specific definition of body and his impressive list of why it matters for human beings to take seriously "the embodiment of mind and meaning." Here are those reasons (I will be borrowing liberally from Johnson's book with these descriptions, beginning at page 279):

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Computer souls

[A kitchen table conversation between a parent and a child]

Daddy, if my computer burned up in a fire, would it still compute? No, Mary. Programs don't simply run by themselves. They depend upon extremely complicated hardware and software. If your computer burns up in a fire, there would be no hardware and no software with which to run your favorite programs. But I've used my computer for a long time. I've grown emotionally attached to it. It makes me sad that it won't actually compute if it were to be destroyed. Doesn't my computer have a soul that continues running my programs somewhere else after my computer burns up on Earth? I'm sorry, Mary. There is no computer heaven and there is no computer soul. There is no evidence of either of these. But we can't prove that it won't keep computing after it burns up in a fire, right? No. Sorry, Mary. Without hardware and software, no computing will happen. The ashes of your burned up computer would lack any systematic structure. They certainly lack the complex organization required to run programs. It is impossible for any computation to occur without the hardware and the software intact. Your claim that a computer would keep computing even though it is completely destroyed is an extraordinary claim that would require extraordinary proof. We have no such proof whatever. But Lisa Jenkins says that burned up computers do keep computing. She says that you only need to have faith and that no one can disprove that burned up computers live on in a parallel world. She says destroyed computers keep working, but not in a physical way. She goes to a special building on Sunday where thousands of people all believe that computers keep computing even after they are completely destroyed. No, Mary. The same thing happens to computers as happens to your own body. As you know, when your body dies, your entire body rots, including your brain. As you know, when your brain is rotted, you don't have any more thoughts because there is no intact functional neural structure anymore, and therefore no basis for any continuing thoughts. Oh, daddy! It's not the same! Yes, I know that when my body dies, it will be impossible for me to think anymore. My computer is different, though. I just can't believe that my amazing computer would stop computing just because it gets completely destroyed! Don't try to compare my beautiful computer to a human brain! It's not a matter of what you want to believe, my child. It's a matter of what actually happens in the real world. You can continue using your computer for now and loving the way it works, but it would be unhealthy to believe that it would keep computing even if it was destroyed. As a parent, it's my job to level with you regarding difficult topics like this. I'm so sorry.

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What is it like to be dead?

The answer is we don’t know.  

I don’t know.  You don’t know.   No one knows.   That’s it.   Off with you . . .  [I figured that this title would draw some Bible-toting fundies to the site].

So you can all leave now.  There’s nothing here to discuss.  Go visit some other blog post.  Have a nice long life, because at the end of your life, you’ll likely just be dead.  You know, you’ll be

blooey, breathless, buried, cadaverous, checked out, cold, cut off, deceased, defunct, departed, done for, erased, expired, extinct, gone, inanimate, inert, late, lifeless, liquidated, mortified, no more, not existing, offed, passed away, perished, reposing, rubbed out, snuffed out, spiritless, stiff, unanimated, washed up and wasted.

There is no reason to think that any dead person has ever been aware of anything at all.  

I’ll admit that it is possible that at the moment you die, your consciousness will continue.  Maybe you’ll instantly be transported to the far side of the moon to ride a sparkly majestic merry-go-round after you’re dead, but there’s no evidence for that or any other version of continued sentience.  The only evidence is that when you’re dead, you’re dead.  There’s nothing more we can say about it.  There’s no credible report that anyone has returned from the dead to say otherwise.   You didn’t listen; I said “credible.”

. . .  Oh, I see some of you are still hanging around because you can’t accept “I don’t know” for an answer.   I …

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