It seems likely that NDEs are hallucinations caused by electrical discharges in the brain as the brain is slowing dying due to the lack of oxygen. They can be produced artificially:
When the right side of the human brain is probed during surgery, it can produce out-of-body experiences, psychic experiences, feelings of deja’ vu and mystical experiences. Artificial stimulation and/or seizures to this part of the brain can also cause classic near-death experiences. These experiences, which include the tunnel experience and our personal vision of heaven, can sometimes be played, again and again, apparently without meaning.
I didn’t find the source of the quote at either website, perhaps I missed it. What’s true, however, is that the NDE is not reproducible by any means we have, though some of the subjective perceptions can be initiated. Also, there are many cases of NDE/OBE where the person was not close to death, their brain was not dying or oxygen-deprived.
This quote is from your skeptic site:
Based on their findings, van Lommel et al. (2001) concluded that we now require a new approach to consciousness – one that gives provision for non-irreducibility of the mind to the brain. In other words, the mind is not what the brain does and may indeed be independent of it. This neo-dualism is worrying.
Nothing “neo” about the concept that the brain does not generate the mind, or the individual consciousness. It’s what we believe. We inhabit these bodies, we pass on and leave them behind. We depend on the intervention of those who have gone on before us.
To read someone who started with no agenda, read Melvin Morse who was an atheist, not changed to a new view by a personal NDE, but by what his scientific mind observed in others that went far beyond the limited references in articles by skeptics, no matter how scholarly the language of their offerings.