Ebonmuse

I've been having an e-mail conversation with an individual who quoted an article in which the author claims that, because he's never heard of an atheist who had a near-death experience and remained an atheist, there must not be any such people, and obviously that's because of the life-changing powers of NDEs. However, he failed to describe what research, if any, he did to establish the first part of that conclusion, and I suspect his argument is based on only a very cursory search, if that.

So, are there any counter-examples I can point him to? Are there atheists who've had an NDE, came back to tell the tale, and remained atheists? Any information on this would be much appreciated - either personal accounts or references to others who've written such accounts.

Aquila ka Hecate

Hi, ebonmuse.

Try Susan Blackmore's work for a start.

I'm an atheist, I've had an NDE, but I'm not too keen on talking about it right now.

In fact, come to think of it, I wasn't an atheist before the NDE- I was a religious Pagan.


Terri in Joburg

MsChutzpah

I was alone at home. The pain was so sharp, intense; and at one point it brought me to the floor...hard on my face. I knew this was nothing ordinary and that there was something life threatning. I managed to stumble from the bedroom, down the hall and into the living room and toward the phone, but I didn't make it to the phone. Sharp, piercing stabs of pain caused me to fall backward onto the sofa, and I felt my life leaving my body. It was soon as though I was beyond the pain, and yet I felt the pain; a surreal, suspension of sorts. I tried to cry out, to scream, but couldn't do that either. I knew I would soon die if I didn't get to the phone and or get medical help.

Suddenly, in between the in and outs, I saw a face, and heard something that sounded like OMG, whats the matter coming from the face, but I'm not sure of anything. I felt a kind of warm, surreal, almost euphoric kind of desire to go with it, and not fight, but after what It seemed liked an eternity, I felt myself being lifted up and being pushed and pulled....and then I guess I went in and out of consiousness, and only remember sirens, and being lifted, stuck, blinding lights and I woke up in the ICU the next day.

A friend had dropped by the house and saw me lying there and said he thought I was dead; he was sure I was dead. He called 911 and the hospital was just a few blocks away. Later, all the emergency room staff came to see me in my room, and everyone wanted to see the woman who was brought in and was thought to be DOA, but they brought me back to life.

Never, did I ever, think that it was anything of any sort of supernatural or divine intervention or 'miracle'. I KNEW it was the just pure luck that I made it to the ER with moments to spare, and a skilled, dedicated medical staff saved my life.




**I had a ectopic pregnancy; the fallopian tube had burst, and had massive internal bleeding*

Corso

Ebonmuse,

Check out the anthology, Immortality edited by Paul Edwards. It includes a first person account of a NDE by the famous atheist philosopher A.J. Ayer. He concluded his article by saying:


BTW, I loved your essay “Ghost in The Machine.�? It was hard to argue with your conclusions about the soul. However, you should read some of J.P. Moreland’s work on the subject. He is a christian philosopher who disagrees with your position 100%. A good place to start would be His interview with Lee Strobel in The Case For A Creator. I would be very interested in your responce.

Jehanne

Assuming that NDEs are real (and souls, too!), we could certainly “believe�? any of the following:

1. When the body dies, the soul “moves on�? into the afterlife, but only briefly. Much like a brain deprived of oxygen, the soul cannot simply live without the body, so it “ceases to exist�? moments after the body dies.

2. After death, the soul “breaks apart�? into almost limitless sets of pieces and is scattered across the Cosmos.

3. The soul inhabits a reincarnated body, but always “starts out�? at the bottom rung (which means that we all come back as bacteria) before “climbing�? back up to where it was before. Of course, this process takes eons and eons, and explains why the Earth was populated by bacteria for so long.

4. The soul exists for eons until the “Age of Karma�?, after which, the soul ceases to exist.

5. “Male souls�? come back as “female souls�? and vice-a-versa, a process that continues ad infinitum. Cross-dressers are those "male souls" that were destined for a female body but were mistakenly misrouted. This explains the slightly unequal male to female ratio.

6. “Human souls�? come back as “dog souls�? and “dog souls�? come back as “squirrel souls�?, which come back as “human souls�?, ad infinitum. Only humans, dogs and squirrels have souls. All other animals “cease to exist�? upon death.

7. None of this is real, but is instead part of some alien “Star Trek�? episode.

RaymondR

Penn & Teller's Bullshit on Showtime did an episode dealing with the Near Death Experience.
The jist of it was that when the brain is subjected to a certain degree of stress or trauma it will "disconnect" from the body to protect itself. Or something like that.

There was a great deal of research done on pilots who were subjected to high g forces in training, and they experienced a dream like state that is just like an NDE.

Watch the show and it may make you into an unbeliever....

Selsaral

This is slightly off-topic, but I just don't understand why anyone would think an NDE is evidence of anything supernatural. I mean everytime we go unconscious we have vivid dreams which are entirely natural, is it that preposterous to think someone who is unconscious and dying would have similar mental activity? Everyone who thinks NDEs are religious experiences therefore also think dreams are supernatural events?

IsItJustMe

I think people who take NDEs seriously look at two things. The first of these is the similarity across the NDEs, which, of course, is easy enough to explain biologically, but people would rather look for a supernatural explanation because they WANT to believe.

The second is that some people who have NDEs report seeing things or hearing things that they shouldn't have been able to see and hear, such as conversations between surgeons while they were not only anesthetized but clinically dead, or things that could not have been seen from the perspective of a patient on a gurney, like something on a high shelf.

These things are harder to dismiss, and they are a good reason to continue to study NDEs in my book. But the inconsistent and anecdotal evidence which exists on these subjects is nowhere near enough to draw any real conclusions from them.

cristo

Near Death Experiences are probably caused by drugs administered to very ill patients.

An example of a drug that can cause similar experiences to NDEs is ketamine - it's quite popular as a recreational drug in Britain. Ketamine users sometimes get the feeling of being outside their body, being in a tunnel and seeing lights.

Phishfood

Just last night, we had an 85 y/o cardiac patient arrive ambulatory. Dilaudid was given IV, and her EKG went basically flat for about 15 seconds. Her eyes were rolled up in their orbits, and fluttering. Then the EKG came back to normal, she sat up and kind of whispered "i think i just left my body. i thought i was meeting my maker."