Of course they are real. It's what happens as the brain shuts down. It's NEAR death. The brain's probably flooded in neurotransmitters and therefore, you have an extreme feeling of peace and well being. And you see what you expect to see. It's not that difficult of a concept.
Heaven is real, says neurosurgeon
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Flooded from where?
It just seems like intellectuals are out of touch with reality when they tell tens of thousands of NDE'ers that they did not experience the afterlife, and they don't have a soul because there is nothing in the standard model that refers to a soul.
According to the data, 50% of atheists got to see Jesus. Perhaps it's evidence of a cosmic joke, or God saying, "See! You don't know everything."
According to the data, 50% of atheists got to see Jesus. Perhaps it's evidence of a cosmic joke, or God saying, "See! You don't know everything."
I agree.
If you want to the truth, I would be happy if there is no after-life, I'm bored with life, it's either painful or there is simply no justice, of course I talk for myself, not for others, but either way the fact remains you can't know what is the real answer. Afterlife or not-the question it is...
I hope it's not.
I agree it's a pain in the ass trying to survive in the physical universe. Most of our time is spent trying to earn a living and keeping up with our responsibilities. And you're right, it is sad to watch the injustice that happens everywhere.
That's my point, I, you and vast majority of people are just trying to survive day by day, and honestly speaking, the idea of afterlife, only makes me more depressive than ever, I had to go through injustice events in my life, and I still have to watch other people's injustice as well (from my family problems to the problems of others). Honestly speaking, I would happy when I end up dead (hoping there would be no afterlife).
Do some research of these NDE experiences. All your suffering dies with the body, and you go to heaven. The suffering dies with the body.
Mazulu said:
How convenient, Mazulu.
Gravage said:
Is your perception of pain truly heavier than your perception of pleasure? Are we talking physical pain or mental anguish? Existing, not always, of course, but normally, I myself love it!
Injustice is much more complicated. Self-centered, though. Most of us are inequality averse, but what if we believe that the inequality is deserved? Plato said that he didn’t know what justice was but be he knew what it was not. Giving is better than receiving but I think that’s only because it reduces our discomfort of having more.
Michael Sandel said that the simplest way of understanding justice is giving people what they deserve. This idea goes back to Aristotle. The real difficulty begins with figuring out who deserves what and why.
Gravage said:
C'est la vie
May I ask the reason for your sense of injustice? It hadn't occurred to me that you were looking at life adversely. I guess I misunderstood your thrust here, too. Usually when folks are advocating for an after-life, it's accompanied by a belief that all of the suffering of the real world would go away, and there would be a second life, one that lasts forever in a state of blissful perfection. This would appear to be one of the motivations for inventing heaven in the first place. It appears that the ancient Egyptians, who lived in better environment than the Mesopotamians (i.e., not prone to flooding) never developed the sense that they were being set upon by angry gods. Their sense of an afterlife doesn't seem to be plagued by retribution, only that there would be a final judgment as to the person's just behavior, and the reward for that would be life after death. I think it's a more optimistic view, even if equally irrational and unfounded as the Mesopotamian view.
I agree that there is a lot we can't know. But this is a concept so close to us, so universal, that you can take it to the bank: the mind is hosted by the brain, and the conscious mind is only active when not in a deep sleep. The odds of any anecdotal stories of out-of-body existence being true are simply nil.
Suppose I were to ask you if the sun was going rise tomorrow. Would you be as skeptical? How and why is this question any different? Because it's somehow more tangible, more a matter of simple physics? One of the great connections we have with reality is with things that are repeatable and predictable, regardless of their complexity. Science is entirely based on culling out the unpredictable from the predictable, and setting the known behaviors aside as laws, so that we don't have to reinvent all of the work done to prove basic concepts every time we want to push further into some deeper investigation.
Skepticism also plays a huge role in applying science to get to a correct answer. In this case you would simply need to ask yourself: do I really think the sun won't rise tomorrow, or is it possible that the people who say they saw the sun not rising might simply be wrong? Or would you also advance the idea here that they might also be correct?
Yes, after a cancer patient has a near death experience, their cancer is cured and they are no longer suffering.
Within the brain itself.
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/chnt1.html
"Chemicals, called neurotransmitters, are released from one neuron at the presynaptic nerve terminal. Neurotransmitters then cross the synapse where they may be accepted by the next neuron at a specialized site called a receptor."
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
This is a place of science, not a place where religious legends are treated with respect. Therefore, statements like the one quoted above are regarded with utter contempt. If you continue to post them without qualifiers you will be regarded with the same contempt.
The so-called empirical "evidence" for the veracity of near-death experiences does not satisfy any scientific definition of the word, and therefore may not be used to submit these experiences as real events.
Therefore if you insist on presenting them (strictly for their entertainment value, since they have no other value in this community), please conform to the rules of discourse. Preface them with qualifying statements such as "I believe"--or better yet, "some looneybirds believe." This will clearly identify them as your personal notions, so no one will mistakenly believe that you regard them as accepted facts--or even unproven but respectable hypotheses supported by incomplete but promising evidence.
The illusion that we are separate from our brain is strong in this one.
I'm sure your life is filled with contempt. If you cannot refute the evidence of the afterlife, then you are filled with contempt. It is not just you, it is the whole atheist community. According to the data, half of you will face Jesus when you die... :shrug:
The wave-function is the last outpost as you cross the boundary from scientific/predictable, and enter into the vastness of the rest of reality. It is here that I post a warning sign: Danger! Turn Back Now!
Again, I don't get what is the difference here between atheists and non-religious. Since the non-religious don't see Jesus at all, maybe the classification is fudged a bit? It's not like atheists don't know who Jesus is, they just don't believe he's God, otherwise they'd be...Christian.
But to my main point...why are there differences in what people see in NDEs? Are there actually different heavens? How odd that, just like beliefs in general, death visions are usually dependent on cultural surroundings.
Almost as if that IS the source. Strange.
It makes perfect sense. Why would heaven be the same for everyone? If you're not limited by a physical body, if you can go anywhere you want, wouldn't you? Would everyone go to the same culture? Of course not. Everyone would go to a place that makes them happy, on an individual basis. Why wouldn't you? It makes no sense that the afterlife would be "one size fits all".
My guess is that if you don't care about religion or you don't think about it, you're non-religious, maybe even agnostic (you don't know if there is a God). But an atheist is someone who has strong emotional feelings about God, such as disappointment, hate or disgust. Emotions like that are strong enough for God or Jesus to want to come meet you in the afterlife.
That's absurd. Atheists for the most part don't hate God. You can't hate something that doesn't exist. It's religion and faith that we don't like.