(February 6, 2016 at 7:04 pm)Mr.wizard Wrote: Just got back from visiting my 92 year old grandfather in the ICU, who just woke up from life saving surgery. He didn't even recognize me, he was calling me JoJo a guy he was in the war with. He was hallucinating that he was back in WWII as a POW, he was trying to pick lice off of his arms (which wasn't there) and was asking me if I could get him past the gaurds so he could get home. My point is this all seems very real to him and he is awake, the brain can do crazy things when it is not functioning properly.

My gran would pick diamonds off her bed and for some reason though there was a black man in the wardrobe who would ravish her as soon as we left they room. The chances are she never actually met a black man her entire life.

(February 6, 2016 at 3:18 pm)scoobysnack Wrote:

(February 6, 2016 at 2:51 pm)Constable Dorfl Wrote: Why would the bullshit story of either someone who was hallucinating or lying be of interest to me in making a decision? And given that so many of these "ex-atheists" are nothing of the sort, I'd put my money on this one being a pathalogical liar.

I would say that it's always good to be prepared for unexpected, so when it happens to you, you will know what to do. There are plenty of others:

http://www.near-death.com/religion/atheism.html

Again, wbat would hundreds of bullshit stories have to influence me? If the lie doesn't work once why would repeating it ad nauseum change my mind?

What you need to provide is evidence for these being real factual accounts, which as I demonstrated with Parnia's goal post moving when he tried to do it, is not going to happen given our current means.

(February 7, 2016 at 6:20 am)Brian37 Wrote:

(February 6, 2016 at 7:04 pm)Mr.wizard Wrote: Just got back from visiting my 92 year old grandfather in the ICU, who just woke up from life saving surgery. He didn't even recognize me, he was calling me JoJo a guy he was in the war with. He was hallucinating that he was back in WWII as a POW, he was trying to pick lice off of his arms (which wasn't there) and was asking me if I could get him past the gaurds so he could get home. My point is this all seems very real to him and he is awake, the brain can do crazy things when it is not functioning properly.

Yes, but even with people who report things like ghosts, or seeing dead people, those are not real things, they are delusions that are false perceptions because humans have no understanding about how the brain can be messed up or how false perceptions and the brain under duress, like drug or mental illness can compile a delusion.

That is my point

(February 7, 2016 at 7:07 am)downbeatplumb Wrote:

(February 6, 2016 at 7:04 pm)Mr.wizard Wrote: Just got back from visiting my 92 year old grandfather in the ICU, who just woke up from life saving surgery. He didn't even recognize me, he was calling me JoJo a guy he was in the war with. He was hallucinating that he was back in WWII as a POW, he was trying to pick lice off of his arms (which wasn't there) and was asking me if I could get him past the gaurds so he could get home. My point is this all seems very real to him and he is awake, the brain can do crazy things when it is not functioning properly.

My gran would pick diamonds off her bed and for some reason though there was a black man in the wardrobe who would ravish her as soon as we left they room. The chances are she never actually met a black man her entire life.

Yes it is very strange and when you look into their eyes, it is just a look of confusion.

CL, my opinion.
I don't think it's possible for anyone to experience anything which the brain already doesn't have "some" information about...

I remember a vivid dream as a kid where I was driving a big truck ( I think I may have watched "Duel")
Upon analysing the dream later, I realised that the parts where I was changing gears were blurred out!
This is because my brain couldn't fill in the gaps accurately because it didn't know how to replicate the motions.

As an atheist, please understand that any notion of woo is ridiculous to most of us.
God, Jesus, etc, is only a small subset of things we find fantastical!

On another point, as Rob likes to point out, even if it was true, can we distinguish this experience from highly advanced lifeforms doing this to us? Religious people are desperate to believe what they heavily invested in, and as such, the thinking is all binary...eg: anything unexplainable must be because of divine intervention.
That line of thought is critically fallacious on so many levels...

And no, we really do not hate or have anything against your favourite spaceman anymore than you don't hold against us our love for batman...

There were different voices calling me. I asked who they were, and they said, "We are here to take care of you. We will fix you up. Come with us."



They began to physically humiliate me in the most degrading ways.



It was getting very bright, rapidly. When the light came near, its radiance spilled over me...




...and I just rose up - not with my effort - I just lifted up. Then I saw - and I saw this very plainly - I saw all my wounds, all my tears, all my brokenness, melt away.



Won't vote because I stopped reading here.

Truth is, NDE's don't offer anything in the way of realistic propositions. Remember; this is somebody whose brain was effectively shutting down. That doesn't really act as a very valid source. Even if it were all true, what is it offering in the way of life after death? What is it really offering of anything?

Yeah, it has nothing to do with life after death. It's just an attempt to say, "Hah! Science doesn't know everything, so I can just make up whatever I want!"

If there was any validity to any of it, all it would show is that something unexplained is going on.

Just believing whatever someone reports to have experienced while "being dead" is as credulous as believing everything the bible says. If you want believe this stuff, you will.

(February 24, 2016 at 7:09 pm)Living in Death Wrote: Truth is, NDE's don't offer anything in the way of realistic propositions. Remember; this is somebody whose brain was effectively shutting down. That doesn't really act as a very valid source. Even if it were all true, what is it offering in the way of life after death? What is it really offering of anything?

Science is always growing, and although I agree it's the best way to measure empirically, it's not infallible. When we have new ways to measure, things will change, as they have throughout history.

NDE's are experiences that don't fit into the current paradigm, but because we need to make sense of our world, we will form various conclusions to explain it. The whole idea that everything can be explained is a desperate attempt to remain sane. Personally I don't think we as humans have it all figured out. Especially the more I learn about government corruption for example, we have people that believe the government story, and then we have whistleblowers that expose the government is lying. However because the government is the voice of authority, anything that disagrees is a conspiracy theory. On top of that people say they couldn't get away with lying so what they say must be the truth, yet everyone who says they are lying is a liar. The same thing happens when people talk about what they experience when leaving their body. The first assumption is that is must be delusional, because science says it's nothing, and consciousness can't exist outside the brain.

I'm hoping to meet Lord Odin in my next NDE.

Valhalla here I come.