How Much Time Do the Living Spend in Heaven?

Or is there some scientific explanation for it?

There’s some scientific basis for it, although anything to do with the brain is still cloaked in mystery. Specific places in the brain have been identified that deal with awareness of self, light perception, etc., and the general order in which they shut down during death has been identified. Light perception is one of the last to go, possibly explaining seeing a bright light. Self-awareness is one of the first, possibly explaining disorientation with the body or floating outside of it.

On the other hand, there’s no explanation for other common reported aspects, like people observing the actions of doctors after they are clinically dead, etc. This could be evidence that consciousness survives death, but all cases so far that I’ve seen have been either anecdotal or poorly documented.

I saw the book on Hell in a Wal-Mart last year; I was tempted to buy it just for the humor value. I wonder if that’s the one that portrays Hell as being shaped like a human body — with arms, legs, a trunk, and a head.

Maria, the short answer is no one knows anything about “near death experience” except that some people have reported having them and that some of those people consider the experience they had significant and life changing. Unless there is some reason to believe those people are cheating or harming other people or are mentally ill and a danger to themselves, they should be able to talk about that experience to whoever is willing to listen.

No one knows what those experiences mean, not even those cognitive scientist-materialists who have an ideological motive to make speculations about them. The frequently cited disqualification made for people who want to believe that these and other experiences are “evidence” of a supernatural is that they “want to believe it”. That materialists want to convince themselves and others that there is nothing to it is no less “wanting to believe” that their speculations about oxygen deficit or even “latent memories of the birth experience” are relevant.

Peoples’ experiences belong to them, in “near death experience” they are the only ones who can tell you what they experienced. You are free to believe all or some or none of them. That’s what we used to call freedom of belief. Enjoy it while you still can.

Miko, Carl Sagan said it and Susan Blackmore commented on his saying it. I didn’t make that up.

Reminds me, I promised a friend I would read the Divine Comedy again, surely Dante is the grandaddy of them all.

More on “Occam’s razor”.:

[352] The unfortunate carelessness of Tennemann and Hamilton has engendered a very serious philosophic corruption. For, it has turned a sound rule of Methodology into a Metaphysical dogma. As J.S. Mill pointed out in his Examination of Hamilton (ch. 24, p. 542 in 4th edition): ‘The Law of Parcimony … is a purely logical precept’. It is folly, to complicate research by multiplying the objects of inquiry; but we know too little of the ultimate constitution of the Universe, to assume that it cannot be far more complex than it seems, or than we have any actual reason to suppose. The value of this warning has just now received signal illustration from the very recent discovery of Chemical Isotopes, which has proved (e.g.), that what had previously been simply called ‘lead’ is infinitely complex in its compositions [N7]. This discovery ought to operate as a salutary check upon dogmatism, and the tendency to turn logical rules into ontological principles.

And if we can’t use Occam’s Razor unless the question is adequately defined, then perhaps NDE advocates should tighten their definition so we have something to work with.

The problem currently is that neither theory is very good.

Theory I: The brain works through unknown mechanisms in order to create experiences of a certain type near death.

Theory II: The mind has a component separate from the brain which interacts with it through unknown mechanisms in order to create experiences of a certain type near death.

Since we know the brain exists but don’t know that the mind exists as a separate entity, there’s a case to be made that Theory I is slightly more parsimonious than Theory II, but they both have that huge “unknown mechanisms” stumbling block. You can give arguments for your preferred theory, but we’re not really at a point where we can favor one simply because it’s simpler.

You do know that there were some mighty impressive thinkers who rejected “Occam’s razor”, don’t you? Kant and Leibnitz were two.

But they were both idiots. 😉 Leibniz thought that the number 1 was God–and not just in a methaphorical sense. He also thought that the Yijing was a lost Christian scripture. And Kant’s unfinished final work has been known to drive anyone who reads it insane.

Dante was certainly the best writer.

I realise this has been done before, but it does make me wonder if athiesm has ever inspired something as sublime as Dante or Milton, or even the KJV bible, anyone want to tell me what I should be reading after Dante?

I never said that the “NDE advocates” I referred to were all people who went through these experiences. By NDE advocates, I meant NDE advocates. People who claim that the visions they and others have when they are either clinically dead or dying are definitive proof that there is a heaven (or hell) and that they went there.

If one cannot provide a coherent, sensible definition for a claim one makes, it is difficult to provide evidence for it. Also, in the act of not making sense, it is nonsense.

Now that I’ve finished defending my choice of words, I can’t help but notice you seem determined to dismiss all my arguments as being made on the basis of ideology rather than because I believe they are true. (By “true,” I would like to specifically reinforce that the word means factual, and present in the real world.) It strikes me as a bizarre way to approach the matter, and a bit reminiscent of poisoning the well. “Don’t pay any attention to him; he’s a materialist – of course he’ll make arguments defending materialism!” Would it not stand to reason that I would make arguments defending my own viewpoint? Am I being intellectually dishonest by doing so? What other arguments would I make?

All sciences – including the medical sciences – are inherently materialistic. The scientific method evaluates empirical evidence and determines what is true based on the conclusions it gleans therefrom. Sometimes the conclusions are wrong, but as a whole, science tirelessly moves to correct itself. If you have a vendetta against materialism, you have a vendetta against science. It is more than simply “fashionable;” it is the source of all technological advancements we have made as a species. It is the reason we are able to have this conversation, over a network that could only have been developed with an acute understanding of how to create a worldwide network and computers to access it. We could not have made it if we thought satellites were held in orbit by cherubim, or if gremlins ran inside hamster wheels to power our CPUs.

So when we conclude – and this next clause is very important – for the time being that NDE-like visions occur when a brain is deprived of oxygen, based on what (admittedly little) we know about the brain and what happens to it when it is, in fact, deprived of oxygen, it is because it is internally consistent with what we know already and that it is more parsimonious than creating a new plane of existence to explain these phenomena. There could be some utterly different explanation for it that makes perfect sense. I can assure you with almost complete conviction that it will not be supernatural. If it is, then it will be unprecedented.

I wonder, has anyone here who is commenting on how ‘made up’ these near-death experiences ever actually been through one themselves?

If not, how does it seem fair or unbiased to pass judgement on something that hasn’t been experienced?

I’m not going to look for tips on running from a quadrapelegic man.

I personally listened to this emmanuel’s account of his death and being raised from the dead over a period of four days of meetings. At the end of it I wondered why the story has been associated with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ?
The entire time of storytelling was all about Manny and he even showed those of us willing to look the shrapnel wounds and where the maggots supposedly ate him.
The venues he chooses to tell his story in is of course the church where all the gullibles offer him money for the telling. But please don’t confuse his story with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ Who died on the Cross for Manny’s and for my sin and for your sins. Dies so we could go one day to Heaven and be with Him.

His story recounts how he was given a scroll to eat that tasted like honeycomb and this saintly figure told him that when he would go to the world and tell his story he would never have to use an translator because he would speak each and every language correctly.
During the four days of his telling he used a translator who, according to the translator, manny used three languages in every sentence and was difficult to understand never mind to translate.

I think to love these storytellers is compulsory but we don’t have to tolerate them in order to love them.

Oh Lord help us to know evil from good as Your Word says we will.