Ex-atheist describes near-death experience

Standard-Times ^ | 1/31/2004 | LINDA ANDRADE RODRIGUES

[Gunslingr3]

Show me your EVIDENCE that Mark wrote his gospel with that motivation

As though you were basing your faith on evidence. Please.

[5050 no line]

Some years ago I wound up in the cockpit of a crashed helicopter on its side in flames with fire coming into the cockpit from the cabin like a blow torch and my dead crewmember blocking the only emergency exit. The situation was so overwhelming that I had an 'out of body experience' looking down on myself trapped in the cockpit, being burnt. The experience was not unpleasant, just a sort of curiosity as to what was happening to my body. Realising I was about to perish, I managed, with considerable effort to 'persuade' myself back into my body. It then all became most unpleasant and I only escaped by crawling down over the pedals and breaking a 'chin' window to crawl out onto the burning tarmac and into the spilled fuel fire. I felt no difficulty with deliberately placing hands and arms into the fire as a sort of 'sacrifice' to ensure that the whole of the remainder of me survived. I eventually managed to stand in the fire and smoke and walked 'calmly' out of the inferno. I suffered severe burns but felt little or no pain at the time, although later on the pain was intense. I was hospitalised, grafted here and there etc and I recovered in due course. The out of body experience I remember vividly and it has left me with no fear now to face the inevitable whenever the time and place comes around. I think I experienced the 'safety mechanism' that the mind and body put into effect in such dire circumstances to face the unfaceable. I have no particular faith, but I do love the experience of mornings and evenings, I relate more closely to animals for some reason, and I appreciate more fully all the things which I had taken for granted previously.

[Taliesan]

EXACTLY. Your disdain for belief not supported by evidence is all the more reason you should be LEAPING to show how your opinion about the motives of those wrote the Gospels is based on specific evidence. Unlike us irrationalists who wear pointy hats.

[Gunslingr3]

Your disdain for belief not supported by evidence is all the more reason you should be LEAPING to show how your opinion about the motives of those wrote the Gospels is based on specific evidence

One, we don't know who wrote the gospels, more importantly, the actual writers of those books aren't the predominant profiteers off the stories. You want E-V-I-D-E-N-C-E that religion is primarily a shake down of scared, confused, and gullible people, ask yourself how many gold rings God intends for someone like the Pope to have at his followers expense. Ask yourself why religious leaders would sell indulgences for people to escape a fantasyland called purgatory. There are even modern versions running the same scam, familiar with Robert Tilton?

[malakhi]

Y'know, when I make a donation to my synagogue, it is voluntary. Meanwhile, I am forced to pay taxes, a portion of which goes toward government-funded science research.

I'll concede that some religious leaders are venal. Will you concede that some scientists are as well? That a certain percentage of grant requests amount to little more than a "shake down", a welfare plan for scientists funded at taxpayer expense?

And that's not even getting into the shenanigans of scientific charlatans like the environmentalist crowd.

[Gunslingr3]

Y'know, when I make a donation to my synagogue, it is voluntary. Meanwhile, I am forced to pay taxes, a portion of which goes toward government-funded science research.

That 'force' part is why Churches were so embedded with European government for so long.

Will you concede that some scientists are as well? That a certain percentage of grant requests amount to little more than a "shake down", a welfare plan for scientists funded at taxpayer expense?

Certainly, I'm not interested in anyone being compelled against their will to fund scientist's whims.

[malakhi]

That 'force' part is why Churches were so embedded with European government for so long.

Agreed. Fortunately, we don't live in medieval Europe.

Certainly, I'm not interested in anyone being compelled against their will to fund scientist's whims.

Great!

[ctonious]

Somebody once said that there are three stages to any Great Truth. First, Snickering Ridicule...then when the idea gets traction - Vicious Attack...and finally, when it breaks through...the former detractors dismissively mutter "Yeah, well everybody knows THAT", and slink off to throw rocks at other concepts they don't understand.

[adam_az]

Somebody once said that there are three stages to any Great Truth. First, Snickering Ridicule...then when the idea gets traction - Vicious Attack...and finally, when it breaks through...the former detractors dismissively mutter "Yeah, well everybody knows THAT", and slink off to throw rocks at other concepts they don't understand.

Then there are other ideas which some people are deluded into thinking are Great Truths, yet the idea was never worthy of more than Snickering Ridicule.

[adam_az]

bravo

telling it like it is!

[adam_az]

"I think I experienced the 'safety mechanism' that the mind and body put into effect in such dire circumstances to face the unfaceable."

Endorphins are natural opiates.

In fact, opiates bind to endorphin receptor sites.

You were naturally anesthatized.

I assume this was a military experience... Thank you for your service and personal sacrifice.

[ctonious]

Then there are other ideas which some people are deluded into thinking are Great Truths, yet the idea was never worthy of more than Snickering Ridicule.

Well, go tell the NSA, the Army, and the CIA about all that. I'm sure they'll listen to your informed and considered opinion.

[adam_az]

"Well, go tell the NSA, the Army, and the CIA about all that. I'm sure they'll listen to your informed and considered opinion."

Yes, remote viewers clearly work. That's why we've caught Bin Ladin, and found the Iraqi WMD's....

I fund it funny that you, a Freeper, are defending one of the most wasteful government programs ever.

[realpatriot71]

I did not feel panicked at all. Some might say it was the anesthetic

It was the drugs. Ask anyone who's ODed on heroin, and they'll tell you they knew they were about to die, but could care less. The brain's normal thinking response to death is a sense of "impending doom". Ask anyone who has had their heart stopped by adensoine (to then soon after correct an irregular rythm with an lectrical shock) and they will tell you that the brain knows when the heart stops, and it doesn't like it one bit.

[Bosco]

You're right, it doesn't rule out experiences and I for one do not want to do that. I have first and second hand knowledge of experiential faith, but they were grounded on what was found in God's word.

Also, as it just so happened our sermon this Sunday (2/8) was Luke 16:19ff. One statement that our pastor made summed up the last two verses well: "If a person does not believe in the Word of God, they will not believe in the works of God." The works should always point to the Eternal Word, and our experiences based on God's Word as found in the Scriptures.

"Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world." - 1 John 4:1

[ctonious]

Yes, remote viewers clearly work. That's why we've caught Bin Ladin, and found the Iraqi WMD's....

I fund it funny that you, a Freeper, are defending one of the most wasteful government programs ever.

The problem with Remote Viewing is that it's not very reliable. It's like a telescope that works sometimes - and other times not at all. But there's no such thing as being a little bit pregnant. If one can see Jupiter sometimes - and sometimes not at all - it doesn't mean that the telescope principle is BS - it means it's not at all well understood.

Also, I never defended the program nor attacked it. That was never the issue. What I am stating is that there is a phenomena beyond mere "oxygen deprivation" - or possibly invoked by oxygen deprivation - which involves ESP, sensing at a distance, or whatever one wants to call it - which is beyond what is currently understood by conventional physics. Below is a somewhat neutral article on the track record of the publicly known parts of the program - but one which at least acknowledges the phenomena.

Washington Post 30 December 1996 Military Psychic Unit's 'Hits' and Misses

by Jack Anderson and Jan Moller

An important U.S. Army general was kidnapped in Italy by the Red Brigades terrorists. The U.S. government pulled out all the stops, shook up every intelligence source and scanned every photo but had no luck locating the general. The government turned to the ghost-finders -- an ultra-secret psychic unit run by the Army under the code name "Project Grill Flame." Three psychics turned their "remote viewing" vision to find Brig. Gen. James Dozier, being held by the brutal terrorists, in late 1981.

One remote viewer, Joe McMoneagle, was particularly successful. He zeroed in on the room where Dozier was held, chained to a wall heater. He described it, but couldn't get the house number. Yet he did get the location, the Italian city of Padua.

More at http://www.mceagle.com/remote-viewing/pub/news/96dec30-wp.html

More successes detailed here at:
http://www.subversiveelement.com/Mind_Control_Star_Gate.html

And the truly phenomenal successes we will probably never hear about...if they're doing their jobs right.

[webstersII]

"There is no contradiction in scripture, though more than a few interpret a few passages wrongly, for the
reasons I pointed out earlier. "

Agreed.

I am still evaluating your other statements, though.

I must commend you for actually using scripture in this discussion instead of merely stating what someone else has said, which is what most people on this thread are doing.

[IDontLikeToPayTaxes]

this is on Sci Fi Channel now.

[TASMANIANRED]

"You assume the brain is designed to trigger a pleasant sensation when death comes. It could just be a random byproduct of the brain getting killed cell by cell. Kind of what happens to my harddrive when running several read/write operations and just switching it off. "

I know you are responding to someone else but this flies in the face of the evolutionists. According to the Darwinists only the adaptions that make a species more suitable to the environment persist. Creatures become more and more niche specific. An adaption that makes death less unpleasant does not enhance survival.


In the same vein since I have thought about things that defy evolutionary thought. There is a valve in mamilian ears that allows for pressure equalization. Everyone is familiar with the growing pressure in the eardrums when ascending while traveling.

The pressure imbalance is corrected by a valsalva.

Why would a feature that is necessary only in the age of speed have become a mamalian feature prior to it being necessary. No animal can move fast enough up a height for this feature to be useful.

[TASMANIANRED]

One of the codes I participated in was a middle aged man, went into Vtach and he went out. We shocked him and he woke up screaming like he had looked straight into hell. I have never heard a man scream like that before.

I also had a man that was a confirmed athiest as was his family. He was comatose on the vent. He went into vtach and sat up in bed, opened his eyes for the first time in 48 hrs and died sitting up. Didn't stay sitting for long.