Proof of heaven

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: being Harvard educated/employed and being a doctor does not make someone more valid than someone who is not. Using those labels as credentials is incredibly useless.

in the context it is relevant. For a doctor and scientist to admit to having an experience with God and believing in God is a big step imo.

It is not true at all that science and religious faith are incompatible. I think only religious zealots who feel threatened by any source of information other than their church think that. I come from a very scientific family- mathematician father and stepmother, elementary particle physicist stepfather, biologist sister, engineer brother, aerospace engineer father-in-law, 2 engineer brothers-in-law, and the rest of us artists and historians raised by scientists- and there is a full range of religious faith among us all. Some are deeply spiritual practicing Catholics, some are proud and thoughtful atheists, some are spiritual and practicing in various ways. In fact I'd say the physicist who studies the nature and origins of matter is the most religious of us all.

Scientific people are certainly capable and respectful of religious faith; it is only narrow-minded religious people who have no understanding of science and don't read anything but their scripture and propaganda from their churches who think science and faith are incompatible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: It sounds like a nice story. But it's still just an anecdote; and anecdotes are not science or proof.

So when you die will it be an anecdote or truth?

to "die" is actually a process - it's not a binary threshold of either/or that flips off in a second.

[Anonymous]

He did say he saw his sister that he had never met in heaven. He was adopted and she had died a long time ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:He did say he saw his sister that he had never met in heaven. He was adopted and she had died a long time ago.

I've had dreams like this about my mom, who died when I was young. It doesn't make it "proof" of anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: It sounds like a nice story. But it's still just an anecdote; and anecdotes are not science or proof.

So when you die will it be an anecdote or truth?

to "die" is actually a process - it's not a binary threshold of either/or that flips off in a second.

+1

we're all dying right now! there's clinical death, which is what physicians use ("time of death 10:36, etc"), but it doesn't mean every cell in someone's body is dead. Being "alive" versus being "dead" isn't like one second you're alive, the next you're dead. What we think of as "dying" or being "dead" is a process that has variations depending on significant organ/bodily functions. Biologically, it can be a two-steps-back-one-step-forward kind of thing. So to answer the PP, yes, dying is very much an anecdotal process - it's not a black or white thing, until every single cell in your body is dead.

[Anonymous]

And to add, kind of interesting how there has never been a single case of someone "coming back to life" from a "near death experience" after every single cell in their body has ceased to be alive. Fascinating, that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He did say he saw his sister that he had never met in heaven. He was adopted and she had died a long time ago.

I've had dreams like this about my mom, who died when I was young. It doesn't make it "proof" of anything.

He did say he had never met her or never seen a photo but later after the NDE he saw a photo of her and realized she was the person he met in heaven.

pp- I am sorry your mother died when you were young.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And to add, kind of interesting how there has never been a single case of someone "coming back to life" from a "near death experience" after every single cell in their body has ceased to be alive. Fascinating, that.

There has. There was a woman found frozen and dead, somewhere in Scandinavia I believe. She defrosted in the morgue and came back to life.

[takoma]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And to add, kind of interesting how there has never been a single case of someone "coming back to life" from a "near death experience" after every single cell in their body has ceased to be alive. Fascinating, that.

There has. There was a woman found frozen and dead, somewhere in Scandinavia I believe. She defrosted in the morgue and came back to life.

No contradiction there. Freezing obviously kept the cells alive.

To some extent it's a matter of definition, though, so I don't think it's worth arguing. But it makes for some good drama -- like Romeo and Juliet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And to add, kind of interesting how there has never been a single case of someone "coming back to life" from a "near death experience" after every single cell in their body has ceased to be alive. Fascinating, that.

There has. There was a woman found frozen and dead, somewhere in Scandinavia I believe. She defrosted in the morgue and came back to life.

Frozen cells aren't dead cells.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Lots of people "have the faith" to simply gain notoriety, attention, money, prestige, respect, etc.

God experience wouldn't exactly bring him popularity among his peers. Again, he's a medical doctor, a scientists, from ivy-league institutions. What do you think he colleagues will say? Most likely that he's crazy.

People who want a career change, aren't really interested in what their former colleagues think. Not to sound like a broken record, but ive-league-ness, science and medical background, are things that are pretty irrelevant. Plenty of people hold those identities and are a complete crock of shit.

This guy is a real piece of work. Religion is big business and brings in the major bucks - I wouldn't be surprised if the author really was looking for a career change. Via Amazon.com:

I read this book at the behest of a friend who knows I'm a deeply committed Christian. Because the book is a testimonial and makes truth claims, the credibility of the author is critical in evaluating what he says.

The first thing I noticed in reading it is signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder on page after page; Alexander asserts his exceptionalism from beginning to end, sometimes subtly, sometimes obviously. I decided to check out his background on healthgrade.com, a website which helps prospective patients find a qualified doctor. The opening page on Dr. Eben Alexander III warns "It's important to do your research before making an appointment with this provider."

His background includes two malpractice suits in 2007 after performing surgery on the wrong sites, and in both cases he attempted to conceal what happened -- in one case retroactively altering the original diagnosis to make it appear he hadn't erred. He faced medical board sanctions and reprimands in 2009 and 2010 in three states (MA, VA and NC), and was ordered to attend classes in professionalism and medical ethics. He never mentions any of this in the book -- published in 2012, so it wasn't ancient history while he was writing it.

Further evidence of his lack of credibility is his assertion that his experience is scientific `proof` of an afterlife. Not even a bad scientist would make this claim: Scientific proof requires that a hypothesis can be tested, and the results can be replicated by other scientists -- that's Science 101. What his experience, if we can believe it, proves is that the brain is a mystery we are only beginning to understand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: being Harvard educated/employed and being a doctor does not make someone more valid than someone who is not. Using those labels as credentials is incredibly useless.

in the context it is relevant. For a doctor and scientist to admit to having an experience with God and believing in God is a big step imo.

People keep saying he's a doctor and a scientist like it proves anything about his motives and his integrity. What makes you think he cares about his standing with colleagues?

"A Harvard-trained neurosurgeon sees the light of Christ after a near-death experience" is a much sexier story that can be sold to many more people than "A Harvard-trained neurosurgeon continues to do neurosurgery till the day he dies for real, not a near-real". There's a lot more money in gullible people than neurosurgeons, because there's more of them out there.

[Anonymous]

takoma wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And to add, kind of interesting how there has never been a single case of someone "coming back to life" from a "near death experience" after every single cell in their body has ceased to be alive. Fascinating, that.

There has. There was a woman found frozen and dead, somewhere in Scandinavia I believe. She defrosted in the morgue and came back to life.

No contradiction there. Freezing obviously kept the cells alive.

When I got my EMT training, they taught us that we don't call anyone dead until they are WARM and dead. A cold person can have drastically slowed pulse and breathing and LOOK dead, but still be alive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Lots of people "have the faith" to simply gain notoriety, attention, money, prestige, respect, etc.

God experience wouldn't exactly bring him popularity among his peers. Again, he's a medical doctor, a scientists, from ivy-league institutions. What do you think he colleagues will say? Most likely that he's crazy.

People who want a career change, aren't really interested in what their former colleagues think. Not to sound like a broken record, but ive-league-ness, science and medical background, are things that are pretty irrelevant. Plenty of people hold those identities and are a complete crock of shit.

This guy is a real piece of work. Religion is big business and brings in the major bucks - I wouldn't be surprised if the author really was looking for a career change. Via Amazon.com:

I read this book at the behest of a friend who knows I'm a deeply committed Christian. Because the book is a testimonial and makes truth claims, the credibility of the author is critical in evaluating what he says.

The first thing I noticed in reading it is signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder on page after page; Alexander asserts his exceptionalism from beginning to end, sometimes subtly, sometimes obviously. I decided to check out his background on healthgrade.com, a website which helps prospective patients find a qualified doctor. The opening page on Dr. Eben Alexander III warns "It's important to do your research before making an appointment with this provider."

His background includes two malpractice suits in 2007 after performing surgery on the wrong sites, and in both cases he attempted to conceal what happened -- in one case retroactively altering the original diagnosis to make it appear he hadn't erred. He faced medical board sanctions and reprimands in 2009 and 2010 in three states (MA, VA and NC), and was ordered to attend classes in professionalism and medical ethics. He never mentions any of this in the book -- published in 2012, so it wasn't ancient history while he was writing it.

Further evidence of his lack of credibility is his assertion that his experience is scientific `proof` of an afterlife. Not even a bad scientist would make this claim: Scientific proof requires that a hypothesis can be tested, and the results can be replicated by other scientists -- that's Science 101. What his experience, if we can believe it, proves is that the brain is a mystery we are only beginning to understand.

You quote Amazon.com, where somebody who doesn't appear to be a psychologist is making diagnoses of personality disorder based on reading the guy's book instead of actually interacting with the guy? I have no dog in this fight, but you can do better than this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Frozen cells aren't dead cells.

I haven't seen any chickens walking out of my freezer.