Objective Evidence for Life After Death

Faith & Science Conversation
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Not just Lazarus; was any person in the Bible really “raised from the dead” … starting with Elijah and the son of his benefactor and ending with the reports in Acts.

For the record, I don’t have a problem with anyone who thinks that way. It’s “an irreconcilable difference of opinions” and no amount of arguing about it is going to change either person’s mind.

  • I say X was dead.
  • You say X was not dead.
  • End of discussion period
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Lazarus ‘stinketh’. The limitation in thinking is entirely yours. I have no limitation that you can identify. Why pretend that natural resuscitation is Objective Evidence for Life After Death? It is no such thing. My Dad knocking on the door now and saying what only he and I know wouldn’t be objective evidence unless there were witnesses. My Mum (sorry ‘Mom’) would do too. Or a friend who flew around me whilst staining the floor. Two weeks after his death. Making a sad claim about a non-event is… sad.

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You don’t know your Bible that well do you? Or why would you be so selective?

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  • Brain death and true patient care [National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information]
    • Absract: "The “brain death” standard as a criterion of death is closely associated with the need for transplantable organs from heart-beating donors. Are all of these potential donors really dead, or does the documented evidence of patients destined for organ harvesting who improve, or even recover to live normal lives, call into question the premise underlying “brain death”?
    • Introduction. " Death is an irreversible event that occurs instantly, distinct from the process of dying. The empirical assessment of any given event, however, “requires a certain time interval” (Ramellini 2009, 60). Consequently, the very moment of death cannot be determined. In his address to the 18th International Congress of the Transplantation Society, St. John Paul II reiterated this universal truth as follows: “the death of the person … is an event no scientific technique or empirical method can identify directly ” (emphasis original).
    • Therefore, the purpose of this essay is to seriously re-examine the status of the potential heart-beating organ donor: is he or she really a corpse? Or is he or she a very debilitated patient with severe brain injury, whose condition can potentially improve or even return to a full normal life, if he or she is given: (i) timely and aggressive neuro-intensive treatment, and (ii) ample time for the slow recovery of brain functions, instead of being quickly declared brain-dead (during the first few days of acute brain injury) and destined for organ harvesting? The essay opens with a survey of patients who have survived “brain death,” a phenomenon which seriously contradicts the assertion that “brain death” equals death. The phenomenon of brain-dead survivors leads, therefore, to the necessity of a critical re-evaluation of the clinical criteria for “brain death.” From this, it will become clear that the severely brain-injured patient, so-called “brain dead,” deserves a different medical approach, one that would both respect his or her dignity and cohere better with the telos of the medical profession, and consequently, with the vocation of a Christian physician.
    • Shewmon (1998b) reported a collection of 175 “brain-dead patients,” whose survival extended well beyond the few days (48–72 hours) claimed to be the maximum limit after the declaration of “brain death.”
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As I said, you don’t know your Bible that well do you? Or why would you be so selective? Did you miss that?

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Again, why so selective? What about the elephant in the room?

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You mean you really don’t know?

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This one

John John 11

New International Version

The Death of Lazarus

11 Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) 3 So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”

4 When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” 5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, 7 and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”

8 “But Rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?”

9 Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light. 10 It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”

11 After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.”

12 His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” 13 Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.

14 So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead…

Can you see it?

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It’s right there as plain as day and the nose on your face. How peculiar. You see things that aren’t there and won’t see things that are.

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How about you stop pretending you can’t see the elephant? Rather than playing a rigged game? Because you’d actually have to deal with the elephant. Fascinating.

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John 11:13-14 tell that Jesus was speaking of death when he used the expression ‘fallen asleep’.

There are no medical reports confirming that the persons revived by Jesus were dead. The same problem as with most miracle-like healings currently: someone can claim the person was not dead or seriously ill just before the moment the person was healed.

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If Jesus were not God incarnate, then the story is a fraud, not a mistaken diagnosis.

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This thread has been circling for a couple of days now. You’ve got 24 hours for any closing comments you’d like to make and then it wraps up. Thanks.

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Take it away, as far as I’m concerned; I’ve shared, done, and said all that I wanted to share, do, and say. All that remains are irreconcilable differences, and I can get those anywhere.

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The post was also for the benefit of the other participants in the thread, readers, or those who might have been thinking about contributing. Thread closures happen all the time when conversations look to have run their course. :+1:t2:

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  • NDEs are not NDEs because they are “mere medical resuscitations”.
  • NDEs are not NDEs because the person having the NDE asks to “come back” or "makes a deal in exchange for being allowed to “come back”.
  • The person who has an NDE comes back because someone else decided to “send him/her back”.
  • That “someone” is never a living human being.
  • A claim that I believe that Jesus misdiagnosed Lazarus’ condition before and after humans thought he was dead and placed him into a tomb is unwarranted and false. I do not believe and have never believed that.
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