Objective Evidence for Life After Death

"Science is only good for repeatable phenomena. And most of life, the most interesting parts, don’t repeat. So, science doesn’t recognize it. ” [Source: Television series, " Evil , Season 1, Pilot.]

1 Like

Speaking of which, where’s Ani99?

1 Like

Looks like not in the neighborhood since Oct ‘21.

1 Like




1 Like













1 Like

Part I







Continued in next post.

1 Like

Continued from last post.

Part II






1 Like

There are plenty of records and academic studies about ‘near death experiences’ (NDE) where people being clinically dead describe what happened while they were dead. The question is how to interpret these records?
Was the person truly dead? Were the memories from the time she/he was clinically dead or from the moment when this person was dying or returned to life?

My own interpretation is that many of these experiences are caused by dying brains. I read that there is (often?) high brain activity just before and after death (seconds). This may cause some false memories.

Yet, there are cases where the person has been clinically dead for >10 minutes (no brain activity) and has described what happened during that time. The persons told that they were invisible observers outside the body, watching what the doctors and nurses were doing. It is difficult to explain these cases as false memories created by dying brains.

There are also cases which may be challenging to interpret within a narrow, ‘traditional’ christian framework but may tell about life after death.

I have been told that elderly and terminally sick patients often see dead relatives or friends within the last six months of their life, often close to death. They may talk with such a ‘visitor’ although nobody else sees the ‘visitor’. Seeing people that do not exist or other hallucinations is a side effect of some drugs. My mother saw how very realistic objects passed by her peripheral vision after a very minor stroke in the area of the brains that handle visual signals. It would be (too) easy to say that the ‘visitors’ close to death are just hallucinations. Yet, they seem to commonly appear before death although the person does not yet have problems in thinking, have not seen any hallucinations earlier and there is no changes in medication.

In some recorded cases, a small child have had memories of the life of another person died years before the child was born. The memories have been quite detailed and accurate but have usually faded as the person has aged. I watched an interview where one such person (already adult) described his feelings as strange, like there were two personalities within the same body. Difficult to interpret, could it be a dead personality getting to another body or some kind of ‘demon’ causing misleading memory transfers? I don’t know. Life is stranger than fiction.

Thanks for the transcripts. Although they are nice, I have to admit that I skipped most of it just because they were long. That is a problem in this kind of forums - few people have the time and interest to read long messages :slightly_frowning_face:

That’s not a problem for me; I don’t post to appeal to or to inform the masses.

1 Like
  • The fact is that there is a fundamental and radical difference between:
    • the “resurrection” of a human being who
      • was alive [by all accounts including their own],
      • died, and then
      • came back to life,
  • and the “resurrection” of a human being who
    • was alive [by all accounts including their own],
    • died, and what is resurrected appears to be the same but does the extraordinary things attributed to Jesus, culminating in being raised into the air and disappearing in a cloud.
  • In the first kind of resurrection,
    • there’s a living sarx,
    • then an apparently dead sarx,
    • then a living sarx that resumes living for months or years.
  • In the second kind of resurrection, IMO,
    • there’s a living sarx,
    • then a dead sarx,
    • then what appears to be a living sarx, but that does un-sarx-like things, such as rising in the air, then disappearing in a cloud permanently.
  • I consider your characterization of all of the first kind of resurrection as “Near Death Experiences” (NDEs) dismissive and inadequate explanations. The inadequacy I can live with. The dismissiveness annoys me. Please note: this is the second time you have dismissed a position that I have put forward.
    • I have a general rule: Contend with me once? That’s an incident. Contend with me twice? That’s a coincidence. Contend with me three times? That’s a pattern. You may want to take a moment and consider whether or not that’s a conclusion that you want me to have.
  • Hearsay evidence is generally inadmissible in a court of law, for good reason.
    • Tecnically, I suppose, any resurrection of the first kind that I described above, involved a recovery of pre-“death” functioning.
      • The question is, as you point out, did a person “truly die”? If they didn’t, then–I think–all of the resurrections in the Bible–except Jesus’–were post-NDE recoveries, no? Remarkable but not miraculous.
      • I note that, according to: Brain death and true patient care, “Though legally accepted and widely practiced, the “brain death” standard for the determination of death has remained a controversial issue …”
      • "For decades, the concept of “brain death,” since its inception in 1968 as the neurological standard for determining death, has been the basis for current policies of organ harvesting from heart-beating ‘cadavers.’ "
    • The second link that I posted–i.e. “The near death experience of Nancy Rynes”–is, IMO, not hearsay evidence. On the other hand, if I tell you about Rynes NDE, my account of it is hearsay evidence. And, for better or worse, the experience is unlikely to be repeatable, much to the dissatisfaction of the scientifically-inclined, I suppose.
    • The third link that I posted–i.e. Oliver Lazar’s “Life After Death” Interview–on the other hand, is a mixture of objective and hearsay evidence and, IMO, far more interesting and intriguing.
1 Like
  • One of the conclusions that I reach, in reading accounts of NDEs, is that that “the deceased” do not typically get a choice whether “to come back” or not. “You have to go back now, it’s not your time” seems to be a common statement made to “the deceased”.
  • Another interesting feature of the NDE accounts is the common theme of “purpose”. “Purpose” doesn’t have to be widespread delivery of a message “to the masses”. It could be to perform a basic task.
1 Like
  • For the record, we now engage in communication that, technically, is “off-topic.” I’m not objecting; I’m just stating an observation.
  • As for your English, I have absolutely no complaints and commend your English. It’ far better than that of others here. I subscribe to the proverb: “Lo que sabe dos, vale dos”, i.e. “The person who knows two languages is worth two people.” English is not my first language either.
  • As for your disagreements with things I say, I don’t have a problem with them either … if you only state them once; twice if I appear to have not noticed the first or failed to remember the first. As a rule, it’s unnecessary to repeat irreconcilable differences more than once. Repetition of an irreconcilable difference indicates to me a desire to have the last word on the matter. People who play broken records are not entertaining.
  • Feel free to correct me when I make a mistake; amend me when I’m incomplete; ask me when I’m unclear; disagree with me when I am clear.

Back to the topic …

  • Given the ambiguity–even in the medical field–the important question remains: "When is a flesh and blood person really dead?
  • If someone tells me that they experienced being outside of their body AND the ability to “observe” events around their body for some time after a major, physically traumatic event, I’m inclined to believe them, regardless of their age. In other words, I consider their experience to have been objective evidence and their recent memory of the experience to be more reliable than not.
  • During the time that they observed their bodies from a position outside of their body and observed events around their body–later confirm by independent testimony–they have been medically dead or not. I can accept their post-NDE reoccupation of their body was a “resurrection.” [Note: I also wonder if that was “the third heaven” that Paul wrote about in 2 Cor. 12:2-4:
    • “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago—whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows—such a man was caught up to the third heaven. And I know how such a man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, God knows—was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak.”
  • The fact that Paul says the man was not permitted to speak, I interpret to mean that Paul was instructed not to speak of the things he saw and heard. But that others who have had NDEs have not been forbidden to speak of their experiences.
  • Paul is said to have written 2 Corinthians around 55 or 56 AD. Minus 14 years, would put the event at around 41 or 42 AD during which time I place Paul in Tarsus:
  • Acts 9:20. “Which when the brethren knew, they brought [Paul] down to Caesarea, and sent him forth to Tarsus…”
  • Acrs 11:25. “Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus, for to seek Saul…”

Taking a break …

1 Like

I can’t imagine how there could be objective evidence for life after death. I saw my father in the morgue drawer, he’d been there for several days, he looked stone cold dead with a particular autopsy signature visible, that could have been faked of course, a few days more and his horribly marred corpse, with the visible injuries that took two days to kill him, was incinerated. Apparently. I can think of scenarios that would be objective evidence for me, but that wouldn’t work for anyone else, any court. It could create a public mystery if he walked the earth again, if DNA samples were taken, but there would have to be sealed testimonies of things only I and my sister experienced, really deeply personal, unpleasant stuff. And no one could actually prove, if he walked the earth again, that he’d actually died, of course. Or the guy wasn’t a long lost son, or had been in suspended animation, or abducted by aliens and cruised around at 0.9c, or…

I arrived in Placerville, the day after my father’s death there, in the nursing home. I called the funeral home, the next day, and made arrangements for an inpromptu viewing, before his cremation. Later, I went to see my father’s corpse and say “Farewell”. Standing beside his body, covered up to his neck in the funeral home chapel, I viewed his mortal remains. And I heard his voice once more, as clear as my wife’s who is next me. He said: “I’m not there;” so I said: “Well then, what am I doing here?” And he answered: “I don’t know.” So I returned to my brother’s home without further ado.

On the other hand, I suppose a person would have to view the videos or read their transcripts in order to even begin to have a clue why I chose the title for this thread that I did.

1 Like

I agree. As far as I know, this kind of cases have been studied and the results written in academic or medical journals or books. So there is more or less objective evidence of such cases.

If a person is very critical, these kind of reports do not turn their head. As someone said, they would not believe even if a dead person would come to them. I think that this kind of reaction tells more about the philosophy (/limited thinking) of the person than the unreliability of such reports.

1 Like

It’s not about being critical. It’s about being real. Not deceiving yourself. Not making mere medical resuscitation anything more than it is. Life after life. There never has been and never will be objective evidence for life after death here below.

I agree wholeheartedly.

1 Like

So, what is the limitation in thinking, you know the cognitive bias, in mere commonplace medical resuscitation not being objective evidence for life after death in the slightest, as nobody actually died.

Was Lazarus dead when Jesus called him from the grave? Or those who died but Jesus called them back to life before they were buried?
Some of the ‘NDE’ cases come close to the stories of Jesus calling people back to life. Lazarus was perhaps a longer time dead but the other cases were comparable to the modern stories of dead people coming back to life.

What the cases do not tell is what happens when someone has been dead for years. The dead-and-revived/resurrected (‘NDE’) cases tell about the first moments or hours after the death. Interesting but not the whole story.

We filter observations (data) through our personal way of interpreting things (basic assumptions or philosophy). When some observations do not match our previous thinking, we either have to deny the observations (‘they could not be dead’) or modify our interpretations. Sticking to the previous assumptions and philosophy no matter what the observations tell is limited thinking, IMHO.

Going through different cases has changed my thinking. Some cases have been such that I would have said ‘impossible’ if the documented evidence had not been convincing. Either some group managed to build up several cases of excellent forgery (conspiracy) or my previous thinking needed to chance. I concluded that I must modify my thinking because the data (documentation) did not fit my previous assumptions. That reflects a desire to seek the truth*, even if the truth is not exactly what I previously believed.


  • The word ‘truth’ can be used to mean different things. Above, I use the word ‘truth’ in the sense that it is the actual way things happened or are (reality).