I don't think a believer should hold contempt for anyone simply because they reject God. Absolutely, it is possible to live in harmony with disbelievers or unbelievers.
The accounts of NDE patients have been corroborated by the attending doctors or surgeons, and sometimes while they were in different rooms. Blind people are describing things they have never before during a NDE. Children generally don't lie about such experiences and have had NDE, reporting information that can not be explained. Even atheists have reported NDE's, albeit their experience wasn't as rosy, but in fact horrifying. Deja vu and lying can not explain thousands of NDE experiences. Telepathy, which NDE'ers say they had, still can not explain how blind people "see" when having a NDE. The fact that wrongdoers sometimes have terrifying NDE experiences in what they describe as hell lends credence to the concept of a God that follows through with his promise to punish wrongdoers. If we can admit that something is happening that science does not have the tools to explain, then we should at least be able to admit to the possibilities of various other nonscientific explanations. The existence of a soul or a God is one such explanation. It would be biased to consider other nonscientific explanations but not the explanation of a God or the soul. Admittedly, my own mind spins when I imagine a supreme creator. How did He come to be? How can He manage the billions of people and so many successive generations? I trust that there are answers to these questions but I do not have the ability to understand right now. |
People can pretty much do anything in a dream. Where did you ever hear they can't travel to distant locations? Basically your dreams are only limited by your imagination. There are many explanations to someone identifying someone they never knew or met. Although I find it amusing you claim they are loved ones yet they never knew them. But that's another story. The most obvious answer is they really do know them but just forgot they did. This occurs all the time. You think you know someone but not really sure. I swear I recognize that person, .... I know I know that person from somewhere ... There's lots of stuff in our brain we just lost connections to and cannot bring back into current memory. It's stored in our long term memory and then some trigger brings it back out. |
Depending on when a person loses their vision they are able to see in dreams. It's only people who are blind from birth or become blind very young that never have visual dreams. They do however have a perception of light. Also, blind people do see with their hands and other senses. Meaning they are perfectly capable of understanding shapes, textures, sizes, etc. by touch. They however have no understanding of things like color. Almost all blind NDE reports do not include color descriptions. The reason being no other senses can perceive color and so they do not experience colors during an NDE. The no colors during an NDE is perplexing. One would think that during an NDE if your vision is functioning it would be fully functioning. Which leads one to believe that images described by a blind person during an NDE are merely descriptions of how they perceive things visually with their other senses. It would be like asking a blind person to describe a box. They would be able to give a visually detailed description of it's size, shape, texture, etc. But if you asked them what color it was, they would not be able to describe it. |
You're not familiar with the nde cases then. Lying or being mistaken might be an explanation for a few, but not every one. If surgeons corroborated details of a private talk from different areas of the hospital, it can not be explained away with dreaming. |
So what about people who are in a vegetative state and then regain consciousness? Or when you pass out? Or little babies who have such a strange consciousness? FWIW, I don't believe souls exist. That's something they had to use to explain how "you" get to heaven when your body remains here. |
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Do you have evidence that "every one" of reported NDEs has been corroborated by surgeons and others? I doubt it. |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9AfJbXe3rc There aren't many youtube links of blind people who had NDE's. However, here is one of a man born blind and who had a NDE and saw visuals of snow and a tram without ever having heard a tram or touched either. There is also the famous case of Vicky Umipeg, the woman who was born blind and was clinically dead for 4 minutes. She reported that her visuals during her NDE were not in color. However, many blind people who had NDE's never dreamed images before in their life. Suddenly in a NDE, they have visuals. While many people who experienced NDE said it was a very loving and positive experience, seeing during a NDE was a horrifying and frightening experience for a blind person like Vicky. Kenneth Ring, who has researched NDE's for 20 yrs said many blind people report disorientation during their NDE's initially, and needing time to adjust to the images they see. We know that many people report experiencing heightened sensory awareness during NDEs. Colors are reported to be shocking and extremely vivid but beautiful.We can surmise that such a vivid vision could be extremely upsetting to someone who has never before known color, not even the color black. It may be that if they had lengthier NDEs, their eyes would slowly adjust to seeing color. Their NDEs are otherwise the same as others. |
SO NDE's are a special kind of dream, more intense, perhaps, induced by different stimuli -- that doesn't mean they are a glimpse of heaven |
I'm not sure what your asking. Consciousness is being self aware. So if your in a vegetative state or passed out you are not self aware and thus not conscious. Once you are revived from that unaware state your conscious returns. So if your conscious is your soul it to can only be present when you are aware. |
The man in the video describes very vague images, squares and tracks. Trams aren't square there rectangle. He doesn't give any detailed descriptions. He also mixes snow on the ground with lush green grass. So there is no way he was describing a scene he actually saw while floating above the roof. And finally, he still admits he has no concept of color. |
If you watch youtube videos of wrongdoers, you would see that they had absolutely zero guilt prior to their NDEs. In fact, they were quite confident and even arrogant. Why insist on their remorse when they professed none? As far as explanations go, religion does not see a clash between it and science. If science can not explain, we assume it simply does not have the means at the time. If science can not explain NDE, it doesn't logically follow to deny they exist or are real. Moreover, to suggest NDE'ers had a dream when they know it wasn't is pretty insulting to them. I know many atheists are intelligent, but there are many equally intelligent NDE'ers. Remember their surgeons often validate the NDE experience. Some NDE'ers were physicians themselves. |
Most NDE'ers do not identify their NDE as a dream. They say it was more real than their life was before death. They claim to have been to heaven or seen Jesus or God. Its interesting that the NDE'ers own interpretations, which remain relatively consistent through thousands of cases, are discounted simply because science can't explain it yet. |
Listen to him again several times. His description was not vague, the tram itself was very nondescript and he said this twice. He described the tram as square. You said thats not true because trams are rectangular. It all depends on what angle you are looking at it. From the front its square. From the side, however, its rectangular. He never mixes snow on the ground with green grass so he's not confused. He describes two separate scenes. One is right after he floated through the roof, he said, and thats where he saw snow and the tram. The second is a description of heaven presumably, and here he describes the grass as the greenest grass you'll ever see. Contrast the boring nondescript tram with the brilliant green hue of grass, and you realize he's talking about heaven in the latter case. |
but I don't |