On the Near-Death experience website, there was a study done on NDEs using 50 people from different faiths. Atheists were also interviewed. According to the website, of the 50 atheists:
50% of atheists saw Jesus
50% of atheists experienced a feeling of fear
and 50% reported experiencing or seeing hell.
Many people would probably say that the reason for this is that these atheists could have grown up in Christian communities where hell was talked about. However, there are also people who claim that most NDEs are positive as a result of chemicals released in the brain. Why exactly is it then, that hell is experienced at all if the endorphins in the brain are supposed to make one feel good?
http://www.near-death.com/religion/atheism/an-analysis-of-the-ndes-of-at...
section 4
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That's pretty interesting. I'm a bit occupied and can't read through the site at the moment, but can you tell me if they mentioned which chemicals exactly? Because different neurotransmitters in the brain have variable effects and are produced/retained depending on what is happening to the individual.
@secular
they did not mention chemicals at all. I am asking about chemicals because I have heard theories where there are chemicals released in the brain which cause a bright light, or feelings of peace. However, these seem to have quite a few instances without peace.
I am reading two books right now. One by Carl Sagan and the other by physicist Brian Greene. Interesting stuff. I have better things to do than read Christian propaganda.
If you dig back to the Home Page of this site, you will see that it is religiously motivated:
http://www.near-death.com/about.html
Now, I'm not saying that their beliefs influenced the studies on the "NDEs" that atheists are supposed to have, but......
Even if they were not lying about these stats, would you still be skepticalÉ
I would start with the fact that there is no reliable evidence to support the claims that a) god exists and b) there is life after death. Since there is no life after death, NDEs have no portal to "look through" into the afterlife.
"Having choked on a piece of smoked salmon that stopped his heart for at least four minutes, the famed philosopher saw, and heard things he had spent a lifetime denying."
In a moment of great stress, he imagined that he saw and heard things that he'd been thinking and talking about throughout his career, things that were probably in the front of his mind for many hours every day. What a surprise.
I've had a near death experience--heart, lungs, brain, everything shut down and rebooted. When my eyes opened, I saw a light (in the ceiling of the ICU), an angel (a nurse who gave me a sip of orange juice), a devil (a nurse with a hypodermic), and god (a surgeon with a hyper-inflated ego). I am now enjoying life after death. It's similar to life before death, but with more flavor and intensity.
NDEs are physiological events for the victims. The authors of this site are vultures, liars and charlatans. The site is pure bullshit masquerading as science.
@Algebe
thank you for your response.
I noticed that the man running the site is a Christian as he uses bible quotes. In some other pages on the same site he "debunks" other NDEs because they do not "fit" with the bible. I noticed he has included some Hindu NDEs and some Jewish NDEs as well, perhaps to make it look like he is not biased. Some of these NDEs (if they are true) are difficult to explain. It's always possible that certain aspects are over exaggerated, or that some of these NDErs are also lying.
People talk all manner of imaginative things for people of weaker psyches to hold out for plausible inquiry. I find it no different than any suggestion of a metaphysical nature and give it the same treatment. If I wasn't bored with it I'd delve into it here out of respect for the weaker mind's comfort. But, there are as many weak minds as there are stars and my patience with them has wandered off with no word of when it will return.
Otherwise, no, I think people say stuff and people believe it. My own father, delirious with a near-death experience, was talking to angels in his hospital room as easily as if he was ranting on about rising taxes. Later, after recovering, I told him he was one card short of a full deck but he said he remembered those angels and swearing the experience was so real. In his belief-system riddled mind I had no doubt his delirium-induced experience was real to him. Whatever, people have their psyches and their subconsciousness that can render some pretty crazy hallucinations. More secular responses to such crap is to say people eat poorly and have bad cases of gas.
The theists who come here testing the stones of atheists don't quite get it. Atheism includes the whole of the supernatural, metaphysical argument including gods, goblins, gargoyles, ghosts, gremlins, ghouls and all manner of psyche-induced silliness. It dismisses everything about all of that. To come here and ask inane questions that pit one silly notion against another is telling of a mind that just isn't well read with regard to atheism. If a person dismisses a god, which is supposedly the chief fabricator in charge, he dismisses it all and further inquiry into it is pretty much unnecessary.
But, I suppose the atheist to a theist is a curiosity not unlike an animal in a zoo.
@Pitar
"But, I suppose the atheist to a theist is a curiosity not unlike an animal in a zoo."
And to me theists are like bacteria under a microscope. All the same, all fretting about the eye in the sky.
Let me know when these results are published in a peer reviewed scholarly journal and I might take this seriously... but until then these are simply more assertions made by christian apologists.
Near death experiences are nureological processes. I suppose it wouldn't be wrong to compare it to dreaming/hallucinating, and as you know you cannot control such things even if you are filled with endorphins, dopamines etc. So it could just be that they dreamt about what they had been thinking as atheists spend quite a lot of time pondering the existence of god, heaven, hell etc. It wouldn't be too far fetched to suggest that their brains thought of that just out of habit or something like that.
Either way are these visions not proof of any hell or heaven. The views are never exact copies of on another. If heaven in fact is a real place, wouldn't views of heaven be the same? Wouldn't people see the same heaven?
The fact is that people don't see the same heaven. What they see is often something personal, which is exactly what you'd expect from a dream and not from a real vision.
@pork222
Bullshit, skewed stats from a religious propaganda mill. The experiments were not actually conducted properly. They did not eliminate all factors and variables. I doubt the credibility of everything this website has to offer. For one the proponents had a predetermined outcome. That alone proves that the "experiment" is flawed.
Quit posting this bullshit. It is utter nonsense. It is SPAM and not worthy or of interest to anyone!
I have done CPR and the Heimlich maneuver. These NDE accounts always read like bad TV medical dramas. Choking long enough to stop the heart is a very bad scenario. This means that a person was without oxygen for many minutes. Long enough to destroy heart and brain cells. The heart does not simply stop when you are choking. The heart will actually begin pumping harder and faster to compensate for the diminishing O2 supply and increasing CO2 levels. The heart stopping during choking is likely related to brain death.The likelihood that one would survive after such an episode is slim.
maybe they saw that because Christian mythology is in every thing like heaven and hell is in so many popular movies and a bigger picture or divine purpose for the hero is every where.