Hope you didn’t get that from the National Enquirer. Wait is this an April fools joke?
2 Likes
Not a joke. In a 1982 study the International Association for Near Death Studies (IANDS) estimated 13,000,000 people had had a near death experience. Current estimate is 5% of the population.
I explained it in my comment on Verse 5. Light waves, in contrast to what we see or measure (photons), experience no time or distance. Hence, the physical universe is the only realm in which time (days) exists. Time is part of the created, physical universe only.
Give me a few days and I will.
Depends on who you ask I suppose but I don’t take them seriously.
What are we expected to believe just because a person’s heart can be restarted after it stops?
I mean, I believe in life after death but I don’t think this heart restarting business is any kind of example of that let alone evidence that such a thing exists.
2 Likes
It’s a common phenomenon. I have known quite a few people who have had near death experiences (NDE). In my live presentations I often have people come up to me afterward and tell me that they have had one or more NDEs and describe them to me. Here is a video in which doctors and others discuss NDEs.
See my reply to MarkD above.
Personal experience are a good reason for the beliefs of the person who had those experience but not a good reason to expect other people to agree with those beliefs.
After all, we had the personal testimonies of the people who felt heathier when they took a patent medicine containing radium even though the truth is that it was killing them.
And NO, posting a video like that does not answer the question.
What are we expected to believe just because a person’s heart can be restarted after it stops?
1 Like
Yep. CPR is no big deal. Even at veterinary clinics. People can sign papers that they want their pet’s heart revived in the event that it stops. Happened to one of my dogs.
And AED/Automated External Defibrillators are even kept on hand at Disney resorts.
1 Like
You’re not asking the right question. You should be asking about the 5% of the population who have reported having experienced an afterlife, and the decades of research into the phenomenon. That’s 15,000,000 witnesses in the US alone. Way more than enough in any court of law.
Those would be in the same category as the percentage of the population claiming to be psychics or abducted by aliens. I am not in the percentage of the population willing to accept the truth of their claims – not the 57% who believe psychics are real and not the 65% who believe we have been visited by aliens. Maybe there are aliens visiting and even abducting people. Maybe there really are psychics. And maybe people experience something of a life after death when their heart stops. And… maybe not!
Incorrect. It does not work that way. The testimony of 5% of the people present DOES NOT prove anything to a court of law!
1 Like
I agree with all of these points and would only add that it just seems absurd on the face of it. It would take something other than reports by those who claim to have experienced it or reports of how many there are and how many believe it to budge me at all.
I just wonder why you- #bigbagomoney -bring it up at all. I’ve met online many would be apologists and this is a favorite trope. I can see why you’d want to hook a gullible non believer but why here where most people already believe. Arguments like this or the many YEC arguments about the necessity of a first mover really cheapen the product. The ones who gain my respect are the ones willing to admit their epistemic weakness and let faith sink or swim in terms of the quality of the interaction instead of trickery. The trickery can also drive those who already believe away when they mistake the slight of hand for the baby.
The testimony of 15,000,000 eye witnesses would be hard to ignore.
Aren’t you a Christian? Don’t you believe in an afterlife? Didn’t Jesus say to the crucified thief “Today you will be with me in paradise?” “Didn’t Steven see the Lord as he was dying?” Yet you don’t believe the testimony of the many flatliners?
Do you believe in Marian apparitions? Do you believe in the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, with 70,000 eye-witnesses? What about alien abductions? Chariots of the gods? Or are these off-brand?
No he is not. I am a Christian and I believe in an afterlife. But just because something is true doesn’t mean an argument for it is sound or that some supposed evidence for it is valid.
No, but I appreciate it.
Not at all.
Don’t know.
Don’t know.
That’s right.
3 Likes
Well, regardless of Mark’s beliefs, in those examples in the Bible, the thief died. Stephen died. (Of course, that leaves the question of who knew what he saw at his deathas the text states only that he prayed to Jesus, with his vision of Jesus coming before he was attacked) Flatliners with NDE didn’t die. And the vast majority of flatliners that survive do not have NDEs. The afterlife is after life, not after near death.
I do not doubt that some with NDEs have had a spiritual experience and perhaps a spiritual awakening through their experience, but that does not make their NDE an accurate representation of the afterlife.
5 Likes
I disagree with much of what you wrote here but this is not really on topic for this thread and it’s probably not worth either of our time to continue the discussion.