Near death experience of Howard Storm

[Excited Penguin]

Cl, I think you're wrong. I can't imagine anyone here who would actually be hostile towards the people they're criticising(at least not in the sense that I think you're implying). There's a difference between belittling someone's ideas and actually hating them as people or ill-wishing them.

Actually, I don't know. You might have a point. Who knows. We'll see.

[Mister Agenda]

Why do you think atheists in India have NDE's involving Vishnu?

I have no idea.

I have an idea: people tend to have NDE's that reflect the afterlife beliefs they were taught as small children, regardless of what they believe now. It would be interesting to see if, say, Muslim converts to Christianity who have NDEs are more reflective of Muslim expectations of the afterlife rather than Christians ones...but it wouldn't have any bearing on which (if any) afterlife experiences are actually true. If people had Jesus and God NDEs around the world, that would be an indication that something very strange is going on that can't be explained by our current scientific knowledge; but that's just not the case.

[robvalue]

A person believing they are telling the truth, and a person changing after an experience, is not evidence that the experience actually was what they thought it was. Just the person believing it was real is clearly enough. Just like people believing their religion is real is enough to apparently change them also, when it's not actually possible everyone making this claim actually has a true religion. At least some of them are projecting their emotions onto experiences. And since there's no evidence ever coming from any of them, it's most likely (to me) that this is in fact always the case.

Personally, I don't care if there is a "God". I'd rather there wasn't an afterlife, but that's an unconnected question. Either way, I try very hard not to let what I want to be real to influence my sceptical approach to claims in general. Certainly there is no proper evidence for any of this stuff, unless it's under lock and key somewhere.

I have no desire or need to claim these things are actually false, I just don't take them seriously as potentially true until such time as there is some actual evidence. Even religious people act this way with regard to everything except their own religion, including other religions, to which they apply a drastic level of scepticism not apparent in their own beliefs.

[Mr.wizard]

NDEs are NDEs, not DEs. They indicate nothing except that oxygen-starved brains do weird things.There is no evidence that any of that goes on "outside the brain". There is however, evidence that it doesn't

But our brains do weird things when we sleep, too. And yet when we wake up from a dream, we know it's a dream. Staunch atheists don't turn Christians from having a dream. Another thing is, why would people who are strong atheists be having dream like visions of God and Jesus in their heads when they are unconscious? And furthermore, why would they have dreams of God and Jesus being goodness and love? It seems that first of all, most atheists think that if God and Jesus do exist, they are evil anyway. Or at least uncaring.  

Obviously, something happened to these people that made them change overnight in such a drastic way, from becoming atheists who hate religion to becoming Christians. That's huge, almost supernatural in itself. Can a mere "dream" do that? Could it do that to you? 

Now, I'm not saying I believe all this. I have no dog in this fight. My faith does not rely on strangers' personal experiences, and some parts of this story kind of contradict my own beliefs. All I'm saying is the possibilities may be worth an objective look and some consideration. Because it is very strange indeed.

We know its a dream yes but some people also believe those dreams are communications from the other side, God, or psychic premonitions.

Yes something did happen to theses people, they almost died, it was a traumatic experience. People can become atheist or theist for bad reasons, it doesn't always have to be a rational path.

[Mister Agenda]

I'm giddy all of a sudden. I think CL is slowly, but surely becoming an atheist .

LOL! It could happen, but we would lose one of the most reasonable theists we have, and I would miss that.

[Angrboda]

People who have consumed ayahuasca report having spiritual revelations regarding their purpose on earth, the true nature of the universe as well as deep insight into how to be the best person they possibly can. This is viewed by many as a spiritual awakening and what is often described as a rebirth.

The brain can make anything it wants "seem real." That people who have NDEs describe them as life changing suggests that the brain treats them as real experiences. Given that, I don't find it implausible that a staunch atheist might be moved by such an experience. However, like Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus, the sincerity of the conversion tells us nothing about whether the experience in question was of something real. We're still left with a choice of deciding that the content of the experience did or did not point to something real. That there is no proof that these experiences actually occur outside the body, I'm inclined to shrug them off as real seeming experiences akin to those people have on hallucinogenic drugs. Hallucinogenic drug experience is also credited with life changing effects. That doesn't make the trip one takes on hallucinogenic drugs any more real.

[robvalue]

Indeed.

A real experience with God could change your life.

An imagined experienced with God could change your life.

Someone's life changing gives no indication which of these it was. It's called affirming the consequent; accepting only one explanation out of many possible ones.

[Excited Penguin]

I'm giddy all of a sudden. I think CL is slowly, but surely becoming an atheist .

LOL! It could happen, but we would lose one of the most reasonable theists we have, and I would miss that.

Yes, but just think of the possibilities. We could have her write a book about how she found reason, and how the universe doesn't care about her at all, and that she's all she's got in this world, and life doesn't have any meaning, and so on. It would be glorious!!!

[Mister Agenda]

I think there's a mechanism that lets us keep our dream life and waking life separate that might not be working in the case of NDEs. Although I usually have no trouble distinguishing dreams from reality, I've had particularly vivid dreams just before waking where I've had to engage my brain to sort things out for a few seconds. I don't think as a species we could have afforded to have had that as our experience every time we woke up.

Someone else made that argument earlier as well, but I'm not sure I know what you mean by that. Let me say this, to have lucid dreams you have to actually train to distinguish reality from dreams, because it's so hard to do that while you're dreaming that we rarely ever actually realise we dream while we dream(without training for it). There's a variety of things that become possible within a dream(anything you can imagine, really) but the same doesn't hold true for reality. So you can easily check, for example, if you can fly while awake, and if you can't, you're probably awake. Or you can keep track of what you're doing and notice your surroundings to check whether something is strange or not. And a lot of other stuff.

I'm talking about having trouble telling the difference when you wake up.

As an aside, when I'm dreaming and become aware of the possibility that I'm dreaming, I jump up to make sure, trying to increase my 'hang time'. If I stay in the air longer than I should, I know I'm dreaming.

As another aside, I often have dreams where I demonstrate paranormal abilities and think something like, 'huh, I guess I was wrong about there being no such thing as psychokinesis'.

[Whateverist]

Indeed.

A real experience with God could change your life.

An imagined experienced with God could change your life.

Someone's life changing gives no indication which of these it was. It's called affirming the consequent; accepting only one explanation out of many possible ones.

So all of this may really be of interest if one is in the market to change ones life.  If not, meh.