Yesterday, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor joined Donny Budinsky on Standing For Truth Creation Ministry to discuss the evidence for the existence of the soul. Dr. Egnor is the first author of The Immortal Mind: (Worthy, June 3, 2025).

Late in the interview, the conversation turned to how peers respond to the discussion of near-death experiences (NDEs):

Sam (co-host) Yeah, I’m assuming that you have peers that you work [47:22] with maybe that they understand all of the data, yet they’re still not convinced and it seems like they should provide reasons. So, what would you say are some of the best reasons the critics would put forth for rejecting these things and how would you respond to them?

Michael Egnor: It’s a good question. Well, I’ve plenty of people I’ve talked to about this. Frankly, most people agree with me. I mean, you know, chatting in the operating room. We chat to friends in the hallway. Most people say, “Oh, yeah, I think you’re probably right.”

You know, people who don’t agree generally just evade the evidence. That is, I’ll mention the Pam Reynolds experience and they’ll kind of wave their hands and say, oh no, there is an explanation for it. We just haven’t figured it out yet. That kind of approach is just evasion of the evidence.

You see you see the same thing with Darwinian evolution. There are a million holes in Darwinian theory and uh when you confront Darwinists with it, invariably they’ll say, “Well, we we haven’t figured that out yet but give us a little more time. We’ll kind of figure that out. And I say that is fine. I mean, that is the way science works. You know, progress. So, I give them my cell phone number and say, when you actually have the evidence, give me a call. But right now, you don’t have the evidence…

He does the same when people offer a pat explainaway for near-death experiences.

Darwinian evolution has been used to explain away near-death experiences

From The Immortal Mind:

Costanza Peinkofer and colleagues have suggested that NDEs are an evolved human example of a quality that some animals possess, thanatosis. Opossums are famous for this. They can “play dead” to discourage predators that prefer live prey. And they really do look dead. The trouble is, the proposed explanation doesn’t account for much. Animals whose metabolisms automatically shut down as a defense mechanism can’t help us understand much about the explicitly spiritual nature of human NDEs. pages 173–174

An academic paper was published on this topic as well as an article in Scientific American. But none of this has much to do with the reality either of NDEs or of opossum defense mechanisms:

Although the Current Biology entry says that thanatosis “possibly” occurs in humans, no specific evidence is offered. It’s also not clear what it has to do with NDEs among people who are actually dying, as opposed to feeling threatened by predators.

One explanation offered by Kondziella, Martial, and others is that “the acquisition of language enabled humans to transform these events from relatively stereotyped death-feigning under predatory attacks into the rich perceptions that form near-death experiences and extend to non-predatory situations.” (The paper is open access.)

In the paper, the authors provide a number of accounts from people who experienced altered consciousness when under attack by large animals. But it’s hard to see any clear link between that state of mind and whatever is going on in the mind of a foul-smelling, apparently dead opossum.

Hypotheses based on Darwinian evolution claims sometimes show a striking feature: They can proceed without the need to establish basic evidence — for example, whether “play dead” thanatosis is a common feature of humans (it isn’t) or whether near-death experiences generally focus on getting away from danger (they don’t). 

Denyse O’Leary, “Once Again: Near-Death Experiences as Possum Tales,” Mind Matters News, July 17, 2024

It almost feels as if some who are committed to a materialist view are not even trying very hard any more; the object is just to say something that supports a materialist view.

If NDE researchers continue to do quality research that helps map out the human experience in this area, a materialist approach to human life will become much less tenable.