Other Thorny Philosophical Issues

Critics such as Keith Augustine (2007: 116-7) and philosopher Sam Harris (2012) find cross-cultural difference to be fatally problematic for the survival hypothesis, and believe that in order to be philosophically coherent, any actual afterlife must be the same for everyone. 

“unfortunately,” NDEs “vary across cultures …. One would think that if a nonphysical domain were truly being explored, some universal characteristics would stand out. Hindus and Christians would not substantially disagree—and one certainly wouldn’t expect the after-death state of South Indians to diverge from that of North Indians, as has been reported.”

Certain themes that we might expect to find in the NDEs of religious individuals are rarely reported, regardless of their religion. For example, neither salvation, physical resurrection, nor reincarnation commonly feature in NDE reports at all, whether from Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, or Muslims. 

NDEs can conflict with the expectations even of those with prior knowledge of the phenomenon, who may wonder, for example, why they did not go through a tunnel, have a life review, or meet the relative or deity they’d hoped to meet.