Near death experience of Howard Storm

[pocaracas]

Certainly, people dream... and weird things happen in some people's dreams.
This can be a perfectly reasonable way to dream into belief in demons.

Perhaps these NDE people don't start out as they become advertised, after the fact.... Remember House's number one rule: everybody lies.

Perhaps what happens to them when they're in that state is, afterwards, rationalized and, due to being imbued in the society that they are, their brains find that societal religious explanation for the "experience", given that they can't attribute a non-religious significance to it.
You must admit that there are many more people claiming to just see a white light under such circumstances. Perhaps those others are dressing up the white light with the baggage of their surroundings, no?

Perhaps you are right.

It just seems like someone who is a strong atheist would *want* to try their best to attribute non religious significance to their experience. It seems that would be their immediate, go to rationale. At least this is what I've gathered from talking to all of you. This is why I am considering the possibility that what happened to them was indeed something very very real. SO real that not even extremely skeptical, strong atheists were be able to "rationalize" their way out of it once it happened to them.

Sorry for only replying now... I've tried to keep up to date with this thread while being otherwise engaged (or e-engaged, in this case )

I understand that you would see it as a radical shift in this Storm person's life.
But, as has been addressed a few times, one must question the story from its very beginning.
- Was he really a "strong atheist"? Perhaps, perhaps not. We cannot tell and, from your own account here, only his daughter is on record as saying something that agrees with the father - conflict of interest - the question remains. For a guy that claims to have been so vocal, prior to this event, there is a remarkable silence from his audience. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but it does hint to it.
- If he was indeed such a "strong atheist", your observation is correct. He would likely try to rationalize his experience within his own context. That he apparently came out a believer, is indicative that either he is poor at rationalizing it, or that he's lying. Why would he lie? to sell books, apparently... With all the fiction out there, religious fiction doesn't seem like a stretch of the imagination, to me.
So, the whole story smells fishy...