RE: What beliefs would we consider reasonable for a self proclaimed Christian to hold?
March 12, 2018 at 1:48 pm
(This post was last modified: March 12, 2018 at 1:49 pm by Angrboda.)
(March 12, 2018 at 11:39 am)He lives Wrote: Well he was pronounced dead twice. I believe he was brought back to life. Here is an article:[emphasis mine]
Dr. Kenneth Ring published a scientific paper in the Journal of Near-Death Studies (Summer, 1993) about people who have had a near-death experience (NDE) of a type providing verified evidence supporting the Afterlife Hypothesis. Such people suddenly find themselves outside of their bodies and observing detailed events happening far away, sometimes hundreds and thousands of miles away, which were later verified by third-parties to have actually occurred. This phenomenon is called "veridical perception" and it is currently unexplainable by modern medical science. Such verified out-of-body observations are highly suggestive of a reality where consciousness can survive apart from the physical body and perhaps survive even death. , where hospitals have attempted to monitor cardiac patients for possible NDEs as they occur in the hospital. Targets displaying random images are placed near the ceiling where out-of-body perceptions are more likely to occur during cardiac arrest. There already exists a substantial amount of anecdotal accounts of veridical perception, and it may only be a matter of time before out-of-body veridical perception is proven to exist under strict research controls which will satisfy the skeptics.
From: https://www.near-death.com/science/evidence.html
Explain to me how, even if true, this is necessarily explained by consciousness leaving the body rather than the equally likely explanation that the ability of clairvoyance -- seeing afar without leaving the body -- exists? It seems like they're just assuming the explanation here is consciousness leaving the body because that's what they want to believe. The actual evidence is that cases of veridical perception are rare and not very compelling. Take the following supposed veridical perception of Carl Jung cited by your site as evidence that NDEs have influenced psychology. In it, Jung describes the experience of viewing the earth from outer space.
Quote:.... Jung's experience is unique in that he saw the Earth from a vantage point of about a thousand miles above it. His incredibly accurate view of the Earth from outer space was described about two decades before astronauts in space first described it.
.... It seemed to me that I was high up in space. Far below I saw the globe of the Earth, bathed in a gloriously blue light. I saw the deep blue sea and the continents. Far below my feet lay Ceylon, and in the distance ahead of me the subcontinent of India. My field of vision did not include the whole Earth, but its global shape was plainly distinguishable and its outlines shone with a silvery gleam through that wonderful blue light. In many places the globe seemed colored, or spotted dark green like oxidized silver. Far away to the left lay a broad expanse - the reddish-yellow desert of Arabia; it was as though the silver of the Earth had there assumed a reddish-gold hue. Then came the Red Sea, and far, far back - as if in the upper left of a map - I could just make out a bit of the Mediterranean. My gaze was directed chiefly toward that. Everything else appeared indistinct. I could also see the snow-covered Himalayas, but in that direction it was foggy or cloudy. ...
https://www.near-death.com/experiences/n...-jung.html
I don't see any details that could not have been known without venturing into space. His description is little more than a vague description of what an earth bound observer might expect to see if they were to view the earth from outer space. All the details which Jung mentions could easily have been known without going into outer space by a well educated man like Carl Jung. Exactly how is this a veridical perception as alluded to? It's worth noting that Jung makes only passing mention of cloud cover over the Himalayas, unlike the ubiquitous cloud cover one would see from outer space (see image below).