Quite a few interesting threads have been sidetracked recently by lekatt’s constant references to Near Death Experiences (which he calls veridical, ie. “truthful or coinciding with reality”). I have opened this thread in an attempt to minimise these diversions, even though they are apparently perfectly allowable in this forum since they fall under the heading “witnessing”. If he posts something having little or no relation to the subject at hand, might I suggest that you respond here, copying and pasting his quote and giving a link. (But be warned. If some of the finest minds here could not get him to genuinely debate his position in 36 pages and he has even spawned a verb “to lekatt”, and he has been doing this on many different message boards for at least the last decade of his 67 years, do you really think you’ll get anywhere?)
Now, I have no doubt that people have powerful experiences, whether they are near death or not (and I understand lekatt was not - he merely talked about death during his experience). But the central point is not whether the experiences were profound or powerful - clearly they are - it is whether or not they are supernatural.
lekatt contends that NDE’s simply can not be hallucinations or powerful dreams caused by non-supernatural brain activity, even though one of his own citations says this:
And, further…
I feel it is useful to remember the principle of Ockham’s Razor here: “In explaining a thing, no more assumptions should be made than are necessary.”
The only evidence lekatt presents which he believes rules out neurological explanations is anecdotal, concerning small details about what a person did or did not know about at a given time. Admittedly, some of this anecdotal evidence has even been found in world-class, peer-reviewed scientific and medical journals such as the Lancet. However, even then there are enormous disclaimers regarding whether someone could simply be mistaken about precisely when they learned eg. the location of an object or the name or appearance of a person, or whether their brain could process overheard details while they were unconscious (rather like a clock’s alarm being incorporated into your dream).
His other main claim is that psychics can communicate with the dead. He is fond of citing a Channel 5 news report regarding studies by a Dr. Gary Schwartz of the University of Arizona. Needless to say, Schwartz has been asked to follow a double-blind, cheat-proof protocol many times (for balance, see his rebuttal.) Not that this is much use to lekatt, mind you, since he appears to think it impossible for vague guesses to be correct without psychic powers. If I “see” an older woman in a chair with a distinctive scratch on it, facing a window, and near some flowers, a telephone, and a photograph of a man in some kind of uniform and you recognise that description, I am psychic. (Of course, I could never simply tell you the woman’s surname or address - those spirits certainly mumble!)
Ouija boards, ghosts, past-life memories: surely only an utter credophile would believe almost literally anything? (Curiously, he seems to think that Ectoplasm is fake and Miss Cleo was a fraud - they were fraudulent, of course, but I’m stumped why he only applies such admirable critical thinking to these two specific cases.) We did at one point pester him to say what evidence would convince him that some phenomenon he thought was genuine was actually a fraud, but he simply did not even entertain such a hypothetical. His personal experience of someone or something’s veracity is all that matters (and they must have an origin outside the brain - for some reason he thinks that just because science cannot yet easily distinguish between neural arrangements then some spiritual entity must be responsible for the fact that no two people’s memories are identical).
So, there you are. If you wish to “debate” him, please do it here in order that he does not take over otherwise interesting threads. However, be aware that the vast majority of his posts are mystical non-sequiturs actually more suited to the IMHO forum, and that you will not be presenting anything which he hasn’t already ignored countless times before.
Some questions for lekatt:[ul][li]Are the overwhelmingly powerful personal experiences of temporal-lobe epileptics also supernatural in origin? How do you explain the correlation?[/li][li]Do you agree with the principle of Ockham’s razor?[/li][li]Is it possible to misremember the time sequence of tiny details while working in or being cared for in a hospital?[/li][li]Are you impossible to fool?[/li][li]Have you been diagnosed with, or are taking medication for, any psychological condition or psychosis?[/ul]Let us make these questions central to this “debate”. I predict that its only real worth will be in acting as a showpiece for lekatt’s dubious rhetorical approach - we will see if I’m psychic in this regard.[/li]
One final procedure I will instigate in this thread in order to prevent it becoming an unsalvageable mess: if lekatt posts a claim which is not merely dubious or unsupported but demonstrably factually incorrect, I will use it as a header to my subsequent posts (with a link which proves beyond doubt that the claim is outright wrong) until he explicitly retracts it. Past examples of such claims were, say, “A medium correctly repeated to Houdini’s wife, Bess, the password she had agreed with him before his death”: Bess said NO medium did. Or, perhaps, “All brain cells look the same”: Different types of neurons.