If this is true, how do I know? If I'm biased to believe in an afterlife and evidence that would otherwise not applicable becomes convincing to me because of my bias, how would I be able to tell this is true rather than the alternative?
That's a great question... I'm not sure I know! One idea is to consider (if possible) some equally difficult-to-explain phenomenon and potential explanations offered up which defy naturalism. Would you be prone to believe in miracle reports of various religions if they truly could not be explained? Like this?
The only thing I can think of right now is to look at other evidence that is 1) in the same class (inexplicable at present, equally documented) and 2) believed to imply some belief by some set of people. If you agree that the evidence for whatever it is in #1 is on par with that for OBE/NDEs and currently inexplicable but deny whatever belief is held by those in #2... you may have a bias on your hands.
Off the top of my head, I can't think of anything right now in this category, exactly. I'll keep thinking, though.
[I'm going to leave this comment like it is, but I'm adding this edit for clarification. After a second read-through, I do agree that the quote I posted proves that NDE's aren't compelling evidence in the sense that they aren't definite proof of God/the afterlife/whatever. But I don't think they proved that NDE's aren't valid evidence, which it seemed to me at first they tried to do, and I then realized that they hadn't. So take this comment with a grain of salt, and see what you can make of it]
DreadedAnomaly gave two good articles to read in his post b...
I was on Reddit today, and I came across (this link)[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/eyiat/for_those_of_you_who_have_died_and_been/]. One of the things I've seen on this site that's bothered me is the exclusion of personal experiences in deciding what a person should or should not believe. I know that less wrong is mostly atheist, and I wanted to hear less wrong's reaction to descriptions of experiences like these.
For example, my dad was in the hospital 5 or 6 years ago when a truck came across an icy road and hit him head-on. His most vivid memory from this is a dream he had when he was in the hospital. He was in a pool of water with my mom, and they were both naked (they were underwater, but didn't need to breathe). He remembers that at the end of this pool, there was a bright light that he wanted to head towards. He began to swim that way...and here, I don't remember what happened, but he was unable to reach the light for some reason.
Such stories seem to be common for people who come close to death, and for a community based around rationality which seems to consider the likelihood of life after death as slim, I just wondered what your reactions are. My reaction is that such experiences are explainable in terms of neural activity, but that doesn't necessarily exclude the possibility that these are descriptions of experiences of an afterlife. I'm not convinced by them, but I do consider it to be possible.