“Curiouser and curiouser!”

Faith & Science Conversation
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Below are separate summaries of each article.

1) Gerald M. Woerlee — “Could Pam Reynolds Hear? A New Investigation into the Possibility of Hearing During this Famous Near-Death Experience” (Journal of Near-Death Studies 30(1), 2011)

Aim / thesis. Woerlee argues that Pam Reynolds’ four “veridical” auditory reports (drill/saw sound, a surgical remark about her vessels, and later “Hotel California”) can be explained without invoking a separable, nonlocal mind: she could have physically heard during periods of anesthesia awareness (i.e., intermittent conscious awareness under anesthesia), with recall shaped by drug effects and surgical context.

Core line of argument (auditory mechanics + anesthesia).

  • Woerlee first challenges the coherence of “disembodied hearing,” contending that if an immaterial consciousness passes through solid matter (as some OBE reports suggest), it would not interact with air-pressure variations that constitute sound—therefore veridical “hearing” implies ordinary auditory pathways.
  • He then addresses the common objection that Reynolds could not have heard because of the loud BAEP click stimuli and ear inserts. Using technical parameters from Barrow publications, he argues the clicks are brief pulses that occupy a small fraction of each second and thus do not continuously “mask” all external sound; they could be ignored as background.
  • He further notes the masking noise level (reported as ~40 dB in related protocols) is well below ordinary speech/music levels, so it would not preclude hearing via air or bone conduction if Reynolds had any awareness.
  • He also argues BAEPs are not an infallible “consciousness detector,” and that clinical anesthesia practice recognizes awareness can occur without obvious outward signs—especially with paralytics on board.

How he maps this onto the “four sounds.”

  • For the later music report, he explicitly ties Reynolds’ reaction (“you can never leave”) to the subjective horror/irony of being paralyzed by vecuronium (no effect on thought, but blocks voluntary movement), while still potentially aware and hearing.
  • He repeatedly points out that Reynolds does not report hearing the BAEP clicking itself, which he takes as consistent with the clicks being ignorable background rather than an all-masking barrage.

Conclusion. Woerlee concludes that Reynolds’ case is “wondrous” but naturally explicable—rooted in human cognition under anesthesia, drug effects, surgical technique, and possibly imperfect monitoring—rather than evidence for mind–brain separation.

2) Keith Augustine — “Does Paranormal Perception Occur in Near-Death Experiences?” (Journal of Near-Death Studies 25(4), 2007)

Aim / thesis. Augustine’s paper (Part I of a broader critique of “survivalist” interpretations) argues that after decades of NDE research, no compelling evidence shows NDErs can obtain information from remote locations via veridical paranormal perception; the best-known “veridical” cases are methodologically weak, explainable by normal processes (especially hearing), or later embellished.

Main argumentative pillars.

  • Corroboration problem & retrospective reconstruction. Augustine emphasizes that most “veridical” claims are reported long after the fact, are hard to verify, and are vulnerable to memory reconstruction, interviewer effects, and social reinforcement.
  • Ordinary sensory channels, especially hearing. Drawing on prior researchers, he argues that accurate details in OBEs can often be sourced from residual hearing (and sometimes touch), with the rest filled in by inference, background knowledge, and selective memory.
  • Incidence arguments. He presses an explanatory challenge: if NDEs are literal afterlife “glimpses,” why are they reported by only a minority of near-death survivors (often cited ~10–20%) and not nearly universally in controlled standstill/hypothermic arrest contexts? He suggests physiological/psychological accounts give a more straightforward answer.

Case critique exemplar: “Maria’s Shoe.”

  • Augustine treats the famous Harborview “shoe on the ledge” story as a paradigmatic allegedly veridical case, then highlights subsequent skeptical investigation arguing the shoe could have been noticed through ordinary means (visible from outside/inside; plausible overhearing; long delay before publication allowing story drift).

Reynolds / anesthesia awareness angle.

  • Augustine explicitly cautions against treating Reynolds’ operating-room auditory recollection as evidence of leaving the body, noting the known phenomenon of anesthesia awareness (often featuring auditory recall), the role of sedatives/paralytics/analgesics, and the plausibility of OBEs being drug-triggered or constructed from heard fragments.

Bottom line. Across the literature and marquee cases, Augustine concludes the evidential base for “unequivocal paranormal perception” in NDEs is overstated and does not meet a compelling standard; normal mechanisms plus methodological contamination suffice in most instances.

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Here’s the standard “pushback” you’ll see from NDE researchers / survivalist interpreters against each article—framed as the strongest objections, not as endorsements.

Pushback to Woerlee (Pam Reynolds “Could she hear?”)

1) Timing/chronology: the key details allegedly align with a period of deep anesthesia

Supporters argue that Reynolds’ most specific auditory/visual claims are reported as occurring during phases when she was:

  • deeply anesthetized and/or
  • in extreme physiological conditions (e.g., hypothermia / reduced circulation / later standstill),
    which (they argue) makes “ordinary hearing during awareness” an ad hoc rescue move unless Woerlee can pin the statements to a plausible awake window with tight perioperative timing.

2) Ear occlusion + BAEP stimulation: “hearing” isn’t just unlikely—it’s procedurally blocked

Woerlee’s line “clicks aren’t continuous, so sound could leak in” is met with:

  • ear inserts were designed to deliver stimuli and reduce ambient sound;
  • some protocols add masking noise in the contralateral ear (or both);
  • surgical draping, positioning, and OR ambient noise complicate “normal hearing” claims,
    so critics say Woerlee underestimates how aggressively the setup is meant to control the auditory channel—especially for fine-grained OR remarks.

3) Content specificity: reported details are “oddly exact” for groggy awareness

Survivalist-leaning writers emphasize that Reynolds’ descriptions include:

  • unusual tool descriptors (e.g., “like an electric toothbrush”) and
  • specific conversational fragments,
    and argue that anesthesia awareness usually yields confused, fragmentary recall, not a coherent narrative with seemingly apt technical correspondence (even if not perfectly technical).

4) Awareness under anesthesia is real—but it usually leaves a clinical footprint

Yes, anesthesia awareness exists; the pushback is: it’s typically associated with:

  • distress,
  • postoperative reporting consistent with awareness (pain, paralysis, panic),
  • sometimes clinical suspicion afterward.
    Critics say Woerlee relies on “it could have happened” without showing it did happen in her specific case.

5) “Disembodied hearing can’t work” is treated as a category mistake

Woerlee’s physics-flavored objection (sound waves / interaction) is often rejected on philosophical grounds:

  • NDErs don’t claim their “hearing” is ordinary acoustics; it’s more like direct knowing or perception-like experience.
    So critics argue he refutes a straw-man: he rules out one mechanistic model of nonphysical hearing, not the broader claim that consciousness could access information nonlocally.

6) The bigger complaint: selective debunking vs the best version of the case

Researchers sympathetic to NDEs often argue Woerlee engages the case largely through secondary reporting and interpretive reconstruction. They want:

  • operative records integrated with the narrative,
  • tighter source control (who said what, when),
  • and a careful separation of “what Reynolds said” from “what later authors inferred.”

Net pushback in one sentence: Woerlee’s account is accused of being possible but not demonstrated, while downplaying how the clinical setup and reported timing were designed to eliminate ordinary perception.

Pushback to Augustine (“Does paranormal perception occur?”)

1) “Absence of strong evidence” vs “evidence of absence”

The most common pushback: Augustine’s conclusion is said to overreach.

  • Survivalists agree the literature is messy,
  • but argue that weak corroboration is predictable in emergencies (no cameras; no controlled targets),
    so “we don’t have airtight cases” doesn’t entail “it doesn’t happen.”

2) He sets the evidential bar so high that no spontaneous human event could clear it

Critics argue Augustine implicitly demands near-lab-grade controls in real-world medical crises.
They claim his standard would dismiss:

  • many well-accepted historical claims,
  • lots of clinical phenomena first known through case reports,
    because the data environment isn’t built for tight verification.

3) He emphasizes errors and embellishment, but underweights “hits” and independent witnesses

Pushback here is methodological: skeptics highlight failure modes; survivalists highlight:

  • cases with contemporaneous corroboration,
  • third-party testimony,
  • or details allegedly unknown to the patient by normal means.
    They say Augustine spends more time on why any single case might fail than on the strongest subset that might survive.

4) Hearing-as-explanation can look like a universal solvent

Augustine leans heavily on “patients could have heard things.”
The pushback: even if hearing can explain some OR details, it doesn’t obviously explain claims involving:

  • visual spatial relations (object location, actions behind barriers),
  • distant events outside earshot,
  • or information reported as acquired while deeply unresponsive.
    Survivalists accuse “maybe they heard it” of becoming unfalsifiable.

5) Target experiments are still early / methodologically hard

On “why not decisive prospective tests?” critics respond:

  • hospitals are chaotic settings,
  • staff turnover and compliance are issues,
  • true cardiac arrest survivors who can later report anything are a small subset,
    so null or ambiguous results don’t settle the matter.

6) Alternative framework: the data are “signal + noise,” not “all noise”

Survivalist pushback often reframes the whole field:

  • memory distortion and folklore exist (noise),
  • but not all cases reduce to that,
    and the right question is whether a small remainder persists after discounting confounds.

Net pushback in one sentence: Augustine is accused of treating messy evidence as if it were disconfirming evidence, and of applying a verification standard that real-world resuscitation cases rarely can meet.

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Yes, personal experiences can be very influential to our worldview. Very few have a mind that is guided just by logical reasoning. Logical reasoning may be important in building or removing obstacles to believing something but otherwise, logical reasoning is not usually the path that leads to believing in a faith/worldview matter. Rather, we first believe or select something and after that, try to find rational justification to what we have already intuitively selected in our mind.

The crucial subjective experience may be a ‘miracle’ like sudden healing or disappearance of a cancer at the moment when someone prays healing. It can also be something that is not usually counted as a ‘miracle’ but otherwise convinces the person that God listened to my prayers and answered. It may also be ‘a touch of the invisible’. Whatever it is, I think that the ways how people get the saving faith and become followers of Christ are miracles - work of God within us.

Although subjective experiences may be important on a personal level, they cannot be transferred to other people like objective facts. My experience does not touch another person in the same way. For that reason, support for the existence or assumed will of God should not be based on subjective experiences. Biblical scriptures or the conclusions of logical reasoning are potentially more influential in discussions because they are transferable information.