Intelligence Squared U.S. Debates: Death Is Not Final

"Always intelligent and provocative as well as disciplined and civil."  - The Wall Street Journal

For:
Dr. Eben Alexander, Neurosurgeon & Author, Proof of Heaven
Dr. Raymond Moody, Psychologist, Medical Doctor & Author, Life After Life

Against:
Sean Carroll, Physicist & Writer
Dr. Steven Novella, Academic Neurologist, Yale School of Medicine

If consciousness is just the workings of neurons and synapses, how do we explain the phenomenon of near-death experience? By some accounts, about 3% of the U.S. population has had one: an out-of-body experience often characterized by remarkable visions and feelings of peace and joy, all while the physical body is close to death. To skeptics, there are more plausible, natural explanations, like oxygen deprivation. Is the prospect of an existence after death “real” and provable by science, or a construct of wishful thinking about our own mortality?