• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Do you believe in near-death experiences?

Jayson

Vice Admiral
Admiral
I do. In fact my belief in a afterlife comes more from this than it does any religion. My grandmother when she was dying would talk to my grandpa who had died years earlier and iIthink there just to similiar to be some random hullicination. I've had a few hullicinations myself and they weren't comforting or logical. Once had a hullcination of person but the person had a rolled up newspaper where his head was supose to be. That is something I would call random.

Jason
 
What kind of question is that? People obviously do have near-death experiences.

Whether or not they are indicative of an afterlife is a separate question.

It's like asking, "Do you believe in UFOs?" Sure, I think there are flying objects that haven't been positively identified. Is that the same as asking if I believe aliens have visited Earth? No, I don't think so.

Clarity is good.
 
What kind of question is that? People obviously do have near-death experiences.

Whether or not they are indicative of an afterlife is a separate question.

It's like asking, "Do you believe in UFOs?" Sure, I think there are flying objects that haven't been positively identified. Is that the same as asking if I believe aliens have visited Earth? No, I don't think so.

Clarity is good.

I mean do you think they are really talking to their loved ones or do you think they are having a hullicination of some kind.

Jason
 
Yeah. If you "imagine" it, then it is NOT real, is it?

And it's spelled hallucination.

My dad has Alzheimer's. He sometimes thinks I'm his sister or mother. He sometimes thinks he has to go to work, even though he's been retired for 12 years. He sometimes even hears things that no one has said; sometimes these things make him happy, sometimes they upset him. He has delusions and hallucinations, but that doesn't make them real. It's a result of his brain deteriorating.
 
Yeah. If you "imagine" it, then it is NOT real, is it?

And it's spelled hallucination.

My dad has Alzheimer's. He sometimes thinks I'm his sister or mother. He sometimes thinks he has to go to work, even though he's been retired for 12 years. He sometimes even hears things that no one has said; sometimes these things make him happy, sometimes they upset him. He has delusions and hallucinations, but that doesn't make them real. It's a result of his brain deteriorating.

My problem is near-death experiences seem to be to similiar to be random. Why would everyone see their loved ones or see their bodies as they hover over it. You never hear about a guy who had a vision of some random person they sort of knew showing up to greet them. I think hallucinations work like dreams in that it can conjur up any imagry you can imagine. Were near-death experiences are more focused and specific but why would a dying brain be so specific when it's dying?

Jason
 
I was about three or four when my grandfather died. I was playing in the living room when my mam asked me if i knew where my grandfather was. She thought i was going to say the hospital, because we had just visited him. But instead i said that he was with the angels. It sorta freaked my mam out, so she called the hospital. My grandfather flatlined two or three minutes earlier.

I was once told by an old lady that children can talk to angels. I never believed that, i still don't. But i cant think of another explanation.

Also, when my mind is struggling with an especially difficult problem. Say, I'm fixing a car, and i cant get it to run whatever I do. I frequently dream about my grandfather. And more often than not, I wake up and I realize what the solution is. I've been told that I inherited his mechanical genius, the man could fix anything given time, and these are the moment i feel closest to him.

Laugh at me if you want. Label me a fruitcake. Whatever you fancy, but this is the truth.
 
Why would everyone see their loved ones or see their bodies as they hover over it.

  1. Everyone doesn't. Most estimates place the prevalence at ten to twenty percent of those who have come close to death.
  2. Next time you're in a group, do a random survey of how many people have had "falling dreams" or a dream where they're in public missing some article of clothing. Point: many people have similar dreams, hallucinations, etc.
  3. Not knowing the exact reason that people experience similar hallucinations does not constitute evidence of an afterlife.


 
My opinion is that NDEs are probably biological in origin as my innate reflex is to reject metaphysical explanations:
In a new theory devised by Richard Kinseher in 2006, the knowledge of the Sensory Autonomic System is applied in the NDE phenomenon. His theory states that the experience of looming death is an extremely strange paradox to a living organism—and therefore it will start the NDE: during the NDE, the individual becomes capable of "seeing" the brain performing a scan of the whole episodic memory (even prenatal experiences), in order to find a stored experience which is comparable to the input information of death. All these scanned and retrieved bits of information are permanently evaluated by the actual mind, as it is searching for a coping mechanism out of the potentially fatal situation. Kinseher feels this is the reason why a near-death experience is so unusual. Because people who experience NDEs report the experience of memories long considered lost, this theory necessarily depends upon a theory of memory in which all memories are indefinitely retained.

The theory also states that out-of-body experiences, accompanied by NDEs, are an attempt by the brain to create a mental overview of the situation and the surrounding world. The brain then transforms the input from sense organs and stored experience (knowledge) into a dream-like idea about oneself and the surrounding area.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_experience#Biological_analysis_and_theories
 
^ I can't remember a time when I believed the assertion that humans had an afterlife and (other) animals didn't. It's always seemed self-evidently false, given that there's no aspect of the human psyche that doesn't have a counterpart elsewhere in the animal kingdom.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top