“Don’t you have faith that your partner/wife/girlfriend loves you and is not cheating on you?” Yes. Similarly, I could also say, “I have faith that Joe will do the right thing.” Religious faith has nothing to do with the colloquial (secular) use of the word faith.

“So, you do need science to prove the trustworthiness/honesty of your partner`s love confession?” I do not. I can “read” facial expressions, hear the tone of voice, and get involved with certain physical behaviors (holding hands). All of these are expressions of attraction or love for another person. Strictly speaking, doing all of this — understanding facial expressions, looking at how people interact, etc. — would fall under the category of behavioral science. However, I don’t need to be a behavioral science to experience or understand love. Seeing that you have a particular subject interest in this subject, you might want to read Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love by Helen Fisher.

“Questions that still have no answer” (I cited some earlier) may always yield no answers because we’re incapable of getting at the answer (which is Colin McGinn’s view about consciousness). Whether or not Sacks has confused his terms is irrelevant and doesn’t take away from my main point: There may be some aspects of a person’s experience that may by unexplainable (for now), but any “spooky” God-did-it–type answer is not and never an answer. By the way, there’s a Belgian scientist named Steven Laureys who maintains that NDEs are a trick of the brain (putting him in the same boat with Sacks). I’ll leave it to you to look him up (and to see if Laureys is familiar with Fenwick).