(February 26, 2017 at 11:08 am)Little Rik Wrote: The other point is this: hallucinations originate in the BRAIN. How is it possible to have an hallucination when there is no heartbeat and no brain activity and clinically dead for more than 5 minutes? Usually the charge of "hallucination" is made by folks who don't WANT NDE's to be real...IMO. IF the NDE IS a mere hallucination, I say, May god bless hallucinations! The world NEEDS MORE of them!
But it all points to mere hallucination because all those who have the so called near death experience see only prominent figures who are associated with their religion. Hindus do not report seeing Zeus, Christians do not report meeting Mohammed, and Muslims never seem to encounter Joseph Smith. And no one ever gets greeted by a long-forgotten god from an extinct prehistoric religion. I mean would that not be one of the best ways to determine what is the real God? When Christian dies and sees Khepri, an ancient Egyptian god he can go back and tell it to the rest of us.
Although you are uninterested in doubting the accuracy of this sort of recollections it is well known that our brains can fool us into believing sights, sounds, and even complex experiences that do not match with reality.
(February 26, 2017 at 11:08 am)Little Rik Wrote: A person who has experienced an hallucination KNOWS shortly thereafter that it WAS an hallucination and they forget it, placing that experience in that part of the brain storage area that houses that bad dream you had a month ago, or where the memory of stumbling over that skateboard on the sidewalk, causing a sprained an ankle, is located.Why would you think that? Many people say they know they were experimented on by aliens, too. Many people also say they know a horoscope accurately foretold their future. Many people know they saw a ghost. Clearly an individual's confidence is not enough. If it is, then we would have to believe every story ever told with conviction as if no human can be honestly mistaken or innocently deluded. Claims of seeing heaven may be true, but without evidence they are all just stories.
The most likely explanation is that the dying or oxygen-deprived brain that is also under medications is probably behind these events and exposed to religious beliefs in his or her culture it might easily trigger one's brain to place or interpret the psychological experience into a religious context.