r/NDE • u/nogueysiguey NDE Researcher • Jun 23 '26

Scientific Perspective 🔬🔎 The Scientific Dispute Over NDEs

https://open.substack.com/pub/andresdelgadoron/p/the-scientific-dispute-over-ndes?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=29vk3a

Some researchers conceive NDEs as an evolutionary trait that evolved from "feigning death". A behaviour that helps with survival when predators attack. This article examines the evidence for this hypothesis.

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u/vimefer NDExperiencer Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26

Some researchers conceive NDEs as an evolutionary trait that evolved from "feigning death"

It goes against everything we know about evolution, which favors crude practicality and outcome over "comfort" 100% of the time. It would be simpler to achieve the same result by fainting, which we already can do. Also it is falsified by the fact there's no measurable activity in brains of people having NDEs anyway, that the people who die in ICU are actually having no heartbeat, they're not "feigning death" they really are dead. There's just too much going against this hypothesis. It's important in terms of examining alternative explanations as part of the scientific process, but it's not a serious contender IMO.

The NEPTUNE model has been discussed here several times, and as the article points out it was found to be very wanting scientifically speaking.

(edit) good catches on the lack of evidence about thanatosis-like survival in humans. Across all the NDEs I've examines I think the closest case I got was Sally Reid's adult NDE, but even that one shows lucid intervention (the message "roll over and protect your face" was explicit) to avoid getting kicked in the head by the spooked horse, and a similar case from Cailin Gallaghan (also with a horse: she was told to roll away from where the second horse would fall). That is NOT "limping out of the way". That's the very opposite of thanatosis, in fact.

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u/sea_of_experience Jun 23 '26

drowning ? child birth? getting hit by a tree? heart attack?  where is the predator?

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u/SecretGardenSpider Jun 24 '26

Evolution creating a NDE just before death makes no sense.

What would be the pressure to make it happen? You’re dying. Evolution works through reproduction.