Hi everyone. I am an active member of a Lutheran Church in Poland. I attend every week and I help out there. Although I pretty much accept religion, I sometimes question things (who doesn't). A minister at my church constantly preaches about Near Death Experiences, and how they are a preview of afterlife. I actually called him up on his claim, telling him that although I believe in God and an afterlife, I do not simply believe that NDEs have anything to do with an afterlife. I told him about the recent Sam Parnia study which failed, and I told him that there was no reason to think that they are anything else than the brain acting up when it is not functioning at a normal capacity. A few of the church members then talked about how they are real, and they sent me a variety of links to try to prove it.
Long story short, I read quite a few (maybe 50 experiences).
Most of them seemed like they could be the product of the brain. However there were about 10-20 where the person claimed that in their experience, that Jesus told them that for example, their father would leave their mother and sure enough, it did happen. In one Jesus told a man he would have a son in a few years. Three years to the day of the experience, he had a son born. Another one a girl met her supposed uncle, who she apparently never heard of, and gave her facts about himself and her aunt who she later verified as true. Many of them have some ESP content in there, where the person develops psychic ability or something. There is a really graphic one where a guy goes to hell and hears God say "I have brought you to hell only so you can tell people it is real. Hell is a real place". My question I guess is, although most of these experiences are not all necessarily true, you will get a few that sound so amazing, or hard to dismiss as simple randomness or luck. Same with some Out of Body experiences, where patients report going to other rooms and other cities, verifying things that actually occurred.
Here is the most compelling one in my opinion:
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/wi.../lynn.html
So, what would you atheists say about some of these amazing and difficult to explain NDEs? Some of them are just too difficult to explain. Some of them seem TOO graphic or coincidental for a brain that is dying to be able to come up with something like that. The psychic abilities and ESP are just out of this world.
the near-death.com website has so many of them and I doubt they can all be made up.
Long story short, I read quite a few (maybe 50 experiences).
Most of them seemed like they could be the product of the brain. However there were about 10-20 where the person claimed that in their experience, that Jesus told them that for example, their father would leave their mother and sure enough, it did happen. In one Jesus told a man he would have a son in a few years. Three years to the day of the experience, he had a son born. Another one a girl met her supposed uncle, who she apparently never heard of, and gave her facts about himself and her aunt who she later verified as true. Many of them have some ESP content in there, where the person develops psychic ability or something. There is a really graphic one where a guy goes to hell and hears God say "I have brought you to hell only so you can tell people it is real. Hell is a real place". My question I guess is, although most of these experiences are not all necessarily true, you will get a few that sound so amazing, or hard to dismiss as simple randomness or luck. Same with some Out of Body experiences, where patients report going to other rooms and other cities, verifying things that actually occurred.
Here is the most compelling one in my opinion:
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/wi.../lynn.html
So, what would you atheists say about some of these amazing and difficult to explain NDEs? Some of them are just too difficult to explain. Some of them seem TOO graphic or coincidental for a brain that is dying to be able to come up with something like that. The psychic abilities and ESP are just out of this world.
the near-death.com website has so many of them and I doubt they can all be made up.
