What the Lancet says about near death experiences

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My mother had a NDE very much like the one described in Lancet following a car accident. She vividly remembers looking down on her body as the ER staff tended to her. She didn't feel any fear, or any deep desire to "live" - just peacefulness.

50 years later, she isn't remotely religious. But she is much less worried about death.

This surprises me. I would think after a NDE it would bring a person closer to belief.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:See, I don't understand why it should be hard for athiests to swallow. If it is shown, using science, that there is some thing called a soul, and it lives after death in a way that has been, until now, mysterious and unmeasurable, that does not prove God. And I'm a believer. It proves only what you can measure and show - that there is something we previously weren't aware of. That is what is so amazing and awe inspiring about science to me - that it gives us tools to continually explore the unknown, and know the unknown. I don't think God operates in ways that are outside of science - in other words, I don't believe in the "supernatural" - things that are outside of natural laws - but I do believe that we don't have the tools to explore maybe 99.999% of the universe yet. Including God.

So your god is not supernatural? Is it the Christian god?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was actually a really interesting book written a year or two ago by the guy running the study on NDE where he runs through the history and evidence and his study. Its fascinating. He does not conclude that there is a God, but says that SOMETHING is happening after death that we don't understand. Look, my view is that everything is describable by science. That is what science does, describe things. If something is happening after death, it is describable using the scientific method, but perhaps not the tools we have now to measure the world. I am also a Christian, and I don't see those things as opposed. If there is life after death, I don't know why that should be "supernatural," any more than other crazy unknown things in this universe are supernatural. They are just unknown.

I agree with this. Today's science might not have the tools to analyze the "supernatural" but it does not negate an eventual scientific explanation.

I just found an article about the near death experiences of blind people. These are people who were blind from birth, but in a couple of cases, they were able to describe the surgery room, the waiting room, people in the waiting room while they were clinically dead and attempted to be revived in surgery.

Over and over again, near death experiences seem to provide evidence that the consciousness lives on after the body dies. Science can not explain this but it's happened to thousands of people, including people blind from birth.

This is tough to swallow for atheists who will not be able to explain it. But then again, they don't need to, and nor do we need to explain the position of believers.

Atheists generally don't have problems with things they can't explain -- they just figure science hasn't found an explanation yet -- like so much else that was once thought to be miraculous or a message from God (like thunder and lightning)

[Anonymous]

Yes, my God is the God of Jesus, who I believe is the God of us all. I just don't think it makes sense to think that everything that we can't explain, or that has to do with God, must be "supernatural." Why shouldn't God be "natural," i.e. part of the natural world, the world as it truly is? A few hundred years ago people thought the Northern Lights HAD to be supernatural. They aren't. We can explain them using science. Does that make them any less awe inspiring, beautiful, or full of God? I don't think so. If I look at them, feel my heart expand, and know I am closer to the love of God in that moment, that is a religious experience. You can probably explain my feelings of those emotions and thoughts using science, describing how neurotransmitters flow and what not. To me, God is right there in the feeling, but the feeling is created using the natural world, explainable by science.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My mother had a NDE very much like the one described in Lancet following a car accident. She vividly remembers looking down on her body as the ER staff tended to her. She didn't feel any fear, or any deep desire to "live" - just peacefulness.

50 years later, she isn't remotely religious. But she is much less worried about death.

This surprises me. I would think after a NDE it would bring a person closer to belief.

Why? She feels the experience just confirmed that the end of life isn't scary and fearful. She didn't feel the presence of some Higher Being with her. She was alone with herself and peaceful.

I fully believe in NDEs, but I don't believe in God. I the death is the release of energy, and for a period of time immediately following death that energy would still be relatively contained and aware, so that a person revived after clinical death could remember what happened in the interim.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My mother had a NDE very much like the one described in Lancet following a car accident. She vividly remembers looking down on her body as the ER staff tended to her. She didn't feel any fear, or any deep desire to "live" - just peacefulness.

50 years later, she isn't remotely religious. But she is much less worried about death.

This surprises me. I would think after a NDE it would bring a person closer to belief.

A few months ago I collapsed unconscious. A friend who was with me at the time says he could detect no breathing. But an EMS team got me to the ER and somehow I'm still here. But it does not make me any more of a believer. For example, shortly after my close call, I heard abut a teen age girl who collapsed after a race and could not be resuscitated -- saving an old guy like me and letting a kid at the beginning of life die is not the kind of choice that would make me believe that a benevolent God was responsible.

There is much that I don't understand and I can't even try to explain. I have no quarrel with those find an explanation in the Bible, the Koran, or just their own conception of God. For me, "I don't know" is good enough.

[Anonymous]

Okay, PP, I don't think you need to believe in God for NDEs to make sense, but floating energy should not be "aware." The whole idea of there not being a soul is that awareness is the product of biochemical function in the brain. If the brain is dead (as it is in NDE) there should be no awareness, because there is nothing to be aware. But definition, almost, if the "energy" is "aware" there is a soul that exists separate from the body. Which doesn't mean there is a God, per se. Just that we don't understand what this thing, the soul, is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:See, I don't understand why it should be hard for athiests to swallow. If it is shown, using science, that there is some thing called a soul, and it lives after death in a way that has been, until now, mysterious and unmeasurable, that does not prove God. And I'm a believer. It proves only what you can measure and show - that there is something we previously weren't aware of. That is what is so amazing and awe inspiring about science to me - that it gives us tools to continually explore the unknown, and know the unknown. I don't think God operates in ways that are outside of science - in other words, I don't believe in the "supernatural" - things that are outside of natural laws - but I do believe that we don't have the tools to explore maybe 99.999% of the universe yet. Including God.

Given that the three major religions all speak of an afterlife and God, and many people having near death experiences say Jesus or God met them, then if we believe in afterlife, it lends credence to the existence of a God also.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My mother had a NDE very much like the one described in Lancet following a car accident. She vividly remembers looking down on her body as the ER staff tended to her. She didn't feel any fear, or any deep desire to "live" - just peacefulness.

50 years later, she isn't remotely religious. But she is much less worried about death.

Right. I don't think every person becomes religious after a NDE. I wasn't for 17 years, but am more now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, my God is the God of Jesus, who I believe is the God of us all. I just don't think it makes sense to think that everything that we can't explain, or that has to do with God, must be "supernatural." Why shouldn't God be "natural," i.e. part of the natural world, the world as it truly is? A few hundred years ago people thought the Northern Lights HAD to be supernatural. They aren't. We can explain them using science. Does that make them any less awe inspiring, beautiful, or full of God? I don't think so. If I look at them, feel my heart expand, and know I am closer to the love of God in that moment, that is a religious experience. You can probably explain my feelings of those emotions and thoughts using science, describing how neurotransmitters flow and what not. To me, God is right there in the feeling, but the feeling is created using the natural world, explainable by science.

This. Perfect. Thats how I feel.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My mother had a NDE very much like the one described in Lancet following a car accident. She vividly remembers looking down on her body as the ER staff tended to her. She didn't feel any fear, or any deep desire to "live" - just peacefulness.

50 years later, she isn't remotely religious. But she is much less worried about death.

This surprises me. I would think after a NDE it would bring a person closer to belief.

A few months ago I collapsed unconscious. A friend who was with me at the time says he could detect no breathing. But an EMS team got me to the ER and somehow I'm still here. But it does not make me any more of a believer. For example, shortly after my close call, I heard abut a teen age girl who collapsed after a race and could not be resuscitated -- saving an old guy like me and letting a kid at the beginning of life die is not the kind of choice that would make me believe that a benevolent God was responsible.

There is much that I don't understand and I can't even try to explain. I have no quarrel with those find an explanation in the Bible, the Koran, or just their own conception of God. For me, "I don't know" is good enough.

I think the notion that God only allows good things to happen goes against any plan God might have. I trust that God has a plan.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:See, I don't understand why it should be hard for athiests to swallow. If it is shown, using science, that there is some thing called a soul, and it lives after death in a way that has been, until now, mysterious and unmeasurable, that does not prove God. And I'm a believer. It proves only what you can measure and show - that there is something we previously weren't aware of. That is what is so amazing and awe inspiring about science to me - that it gives us tools to continually explore the unknown, and know the unknown. I don't think God operates in ways that are outside of science - in other words, I don't believe in the "supernatural" - things that are outside of natural laws - but I do believe that we don't have the tools to explore maybe 99.999% of the universe yet. Including God.

Given that the three major religions all speak of an afterlife and God, and many people having near death experiences say Jesus or God met them, then if we believe in afterlife, it lends credence to the existence of a God also.

but people's religious NDE's only include the god that person happens to already believe in -- never the god of another religion -- suggesting that there's a strong psychological component totally unrelated to the actual existence of a particular god

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My mother had a NDE very much like the one described in Lancet following a car accident. She vividly remembers looking down on her body as the ER staff tended to her. She didn't feel any fear, or any deep desire to "live" - just peacefulness.

50 years later, she isn't remotely religious. But she is much less worried about death.

This surprises me. I would think after a NDE it would bring a person closer to belief.

A few months ago I collapsed unconscious. A friend who was with me at the time says he could detect no breathing. But an EMS team got me to the ER and somehow I'm still here. But it does not make me any more of a believer. For example, shortly after my close call, I heard abut a teen age girl who collapsed after a race and could not be resuscitated -- saving an old guy like me and letting a kid at the beginning of life die is not the kind of choice that would make me believe that a benevolent God was responsible.

There is much that I don't understand and I can't even try to explain. I have no quarrel with those find an explanation in the Bible, the Koran, or just their own conception of God. For me, "I don't know" is good enough.

I think the notion that God only allows good things to happen goes against any plan God might have. I trust that God has a plan.

Sounds like you know a lot about god's plan. Where did you get the knowledge and how do you know it's trustworthy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, my God is the God of Jesus, who I believe is the God of us all. I just don't think it makes sense to think that everything that we can't explain, or that has to do with God, must be "supernatural." Why shouldn't God be "natural," i.e. part of the natural world, the world as it truly is? A few hundred years ago people thought the Northern Lights HAD to be supernatural. They aren't. We can explain them using science. Does that make them any less awe inspiring, beautiful, or full of God? I don't think so. If I look at them, feel my heart expand, and know I am closer to the love of God in that moment, that is a religious experience. You can probably explain my feelings of those emotions and thoughts using science, describing how neurotransmitters flow and what not. To me, God is right there in the feeling, but the feeling is created using the natural world, explainable by science.

But there's a lot in the story of Jesus that is not within the natural world -- e.g. resurrection, bodily ascension into heaven, virgin birth, walking on water. How does this fit in with God being in the natural world, explainable by science?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:See, I don't understand why it should be hard for athiests to swallow. If it is shown, using science, that there is some thing called a soul, and it lives after death in a way that has been, until now, mysterious and unmeasurable, that does not prove God. And I'm a believer. It proves only what you can measure and show - that there is something we previously weren't aware of. That is what is so amazing and awe inspiring about science to me - that it gives us tools to continually explore the unknown, and know the unknown. I don't think God operates in ways that are outside of science - in other words, I don't believe in the "supernatural" - things that are outside of natural laws - but I do believe that we don't have the tools to explore maybe 99.999% of the universe yet. Including God.

Given that the three major religions all speak of an afterlife and God, and many people having near death experiences say Jesus or God met them, then if we believe in afterlife, it lends credence to the existence of a God also.

but people's religious NDE's only include the god that person happens to already believe in -- never the god of another religion -- suggesting that there's a strong psychological component totally unrelated to the actual existence of a particular god

meant to say, a strong cultural/social/psychological component