Posted on 12/14/2001 5:51:34 PM PST by adakotab
Medical explanations cannot account for near death experiences (NDEs), according to the results of the biggest prospective study to date of patients who were resuscitated after clinical death. However, patients who reported an NDE were more likely to die soon afterwards.
Pim Van Lommel and his team at Hospital Rijnstate in the Netherlands interviewed 344 patients who were resuscitated after heart failure at 10 hospitals across the country. The patients were questioned as soon as they were well enough.
Eighteen per cent reported an NDE - classed as a memory of "a special state of consciousness, including specific elements such as out-of-body experience, pleasant feelings and seeing a tunnel."
But the team found no link between NDEs and drugs used to treat the patients, the duration of cardiac arrest or unconsciousness, or the patients' reports of the degree to which they feared death before the incident.
"This was the surprising thing," van Lommel says. "It's always said that NDEs are just a phenomenon relating to the dying brain and the lack of oxygen to the brain cells. But that's not true. If there was a physiological cause, all the patients should have had an NDE."
LETTING GO
The patients were mostly elderly, with an average age of 62. Van Lommel found that those that reported an NDE were significantly more likely to die within 30 days.
"There is the idea that people can decide to some extent when they die," says van Lommel. "Perhaps when they had an NDE, their fear of death was over and they could let go."
The team did find that patients who were under 60 and female were more likely to report an NDE. But the causes of the experience remain a mystery, van Lommel says.
His team questioned surviving NDE patients again two years after their resuscitation, and then after eight years. Most of the patients recalled the event in striking detail. And most showed significant psychological changes, the team reports. The 23 NDE patients who were still alive eight years later "had become more emotionally vulnerable and empathic", they write.
PUSHING THE LIMIT
Van Lommel's team report anecdotal stories of patients recalling events that happened around them during out of body experiences while they were clinically dead. These experiences "push at the limit of medical ideas about the range of human consciousness and the mind/brain relationship," Van Lommel says.
Christopher French, at the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths College, London, says the team's paper is "intriguing", though he notes that van Lommel's team failed to contact the patients for corroboration. He points out that NDEs are impossible to objectively verify - and that out of body experiences have not been proved to exist.
But, in a commentary on the research, he writes: "the out of body component of the NDE offers probably the best hope of launching any kind of attack on current concepts of the relationship between consciousness and brain function."
If researchers could prove that clinically dead patients, with no electrical activity in their cortex, can be aware of events around them and form memories, this would suggest that the brain does not generate consciousness, French and Van Lommel think.
Journal reference: The Lancet (vol 358, p 2039)
You mean fall from grace? You might ask yourself why did god wait for thousands of years after Adam and Eve (which is another biblical fairy tale) to send Jesus to our world? My own theory is that Christ arrived at a critical juncture in our history to instill a higher degree of civility to man without which concepts like human rights, democracy and freedom from tyranny would probably never exist.
Ouch, Biblical fairy tale? Either the Bible is true, completely, or it's all false. One cannot in good faith take the Bible in parts and believe in God. I for one believe everything I read in the Bible, it is all true including Adam and Eve and creationism. But that is my belief.
How many things in life are either/or? Extremists think like you.
Where did I say that? Don't put words in my mouth. I just don't believe much out of the Old Testament.
Using your criteria, the excerpt below from Pam Reynalds NDE would tend to show that her experience was REAL.
As the operation was being performed, Pam's near-death experience began to unfold. She relates the story with remarkable detail and her observations of the surgery were later verified to be true:
"The next thing I recall was the sound: It was a natural "D". As I listened to the sound, I felt it was pulling me out of the top of my head. The further out of my body I got, the more clear the tone became. I had the impression it was like a road, a frequency that you go on ... I remember seeing several things in the operating room when I was looking down. It was the most aware that I think that I have ever been in my entire life ... I was metaphorically sitting on [the doctor's] shoulder. It was not like normal vision. It was brighter and more focused and clearer than normal vision ... There was so much in the operating room that I didn't recognize, and so many people. "I thought the way they had my head shaved was very peculiar. I expected them to take all of the hair, but they did not ...
"The saw thing that I hated the sound of looked like an electric toothbrush and it had a dent in it, a groove at the top where the saw appeared to go into the handle, but it didn't ... And the saw had interchangeable blades, too, but these blades were in what looked like a socket wrench case ... I heard the saw crank up. I didn't see them use it on my head, but I think I heard it being used on something. It was humming at a relatively high pitch and then all of a sudden it went Brrrrrrrrr! like that.
"Someone said something about my veins and arteries being very small. I believe it was a female voice and that it was Dr. Murray, but I'm not sure. She was the cardiologist [sic]. I remember thinking that I should have told her about that ... I remember the heart-lung machine. I didn't like the respirator ... I remember a lot of tools and instruments that I did not readily recognize."
If they really had a NDE, they would identify objects in the operating room
Would you agree that the "saw thing" might qualify as an operating room "object?"
For that I am an extremists?
If Christian's are extremists then so be it. I am a devout Christian who lives by the word of God, the Bible, in it's complete glory. Nothing else in life is absolute except the word of God.
In your case you are. Don't speak for the rest of us Christians. You Bible Thumpers are in a world of your own.
I speak for myself. and YES I am happy to be a Bible Thumper, thank-you for the compliment. I am in a world of my own and one day I hope to sit at the feet of Jesus.
I hope you are there with me after judgement day.
Then you can not believe much of the New Testament eithor. Jesus and the apostles believe it. Unless you think Jesus is a liar and not the Christ??
Matthew 2:5 And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet,
Matthew 4:4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
Matthew 4:6 And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
Matthew 4:7 Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
Matthew 4:10 Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: It is written Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
Matthew 11:10 For this is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.
Matthew 21:13 And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.
Matthew 26:24 The Son of man goeth as it is written of him: but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born.
Matthew 26:31 Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.
Mark 1:2 As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.
Mark 7:6 He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.
Mark 9:12 And he answered and told them, Elias verily cometh first, and restoreth all things; and how it is written of the Son of man, that he must suffer many things, and be set at nought.
Mark 9:13 But I say unto you, That Elias is indeed come, and they have done unto him whatsoever they listed, as it is written of him.
Mark 14:21 The Son of man indeed goeth, as it is written of him: but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! good were it for that man if he had never been born.
Mark 14:27 And Jesus saith unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered.
Luke 2:23 (As it is written in the law of the LORD, Every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord;)
Luke 3:4 As it is written in the book of the words of Esaias the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
Luke 4:4 And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.
Luke 4:8 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
Luke 4:10 For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee:
Luke 7:27 This is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.
Luke 19:46 Saying unto them, It is written, My house is the house of prayer: but ye have made it a den of thieves.
Luke 24:46 And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day:
John 6:31 Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.
John 6:45 It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me.
John 12:14 And Jesus, when he had found a young ass, sat thereon; as it is written,
Acts 1:20 For it is written in the book of Psalms, Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein: and his bishoprick let another take.
Acts 7:42 Then God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven; as it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel, have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness?
Acts 15:15 And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written,
Acts 23:5 Then said Paul, I wist not, brethren, that he was the high priest: for it is written, Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people.
Romans 1:17 For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
Romans 2:24 For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, as it is written.
Romans 3:4 God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged.
Romans 3:10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
Romans 4:17
(As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.
Romans 8:36 As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
Romans 9:13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.
Romans 9:33 As it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.
Romans 10:15 And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!
Romans 11:8 >B> (According as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear;) unto this day
. Romans 11:26
And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: Romans 12:19 Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord
. Romans 14:11 For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.
Romans 15:3 For even Christ pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me.
Romans 15:9 And that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy; as it is written, For this cause I will confess to thee among the Gentiles, and sing unto thy name.
Romans 15:21 But as it is written, To whom he was not spoken of, they shall see: and they that have not heard shall understand.
1 Corinthians 1:19 For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.
1 Corinthians 1:31 That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.
1 Corinthians 2:9 But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
1 Corinthians 3:19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness.
1 Corinthians 9:9 For it is written in the law of Moses, thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen?
1 Corinthians 10:7 Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.
1 Corinthians 14:21 In the law it is written, With men of other tongues and other lips will I speak unto this people; and yet for all that will they not hear me, saith the Lord.
1 Corinthians 15:45
And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. 2 Corinthians 4:13 We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak;
2 Corinthians 8:15 As it is written, He that had gathered much had nothing over; and he that had gathered little had no lack.
2 Corinthians 9:9 (As it is written, He hath dispersed abroad; he hath given to the poor: his righteousness remaineth for ever.
Galatians 3:10 For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.
Galatians 3:13 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:
Galatians 4:22 For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman.
Galatians 4:27 For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband.
Hebrews 10:7 Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God.
1 Peter 1:16 Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.
The Old Testament prefigured Christ. Jesus and His disciples quoted from it throughout their ministries. Jesus is called the second Adam
1 Corinthians 15:45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.
With out the sin of Adam there was no need for the sacrifice of the Cross.
You can not pick and choose what is true in scripture....Jesus said the word of God was the truth
John 17:17 Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.
There was no New Testament when He spoke .He was attesting to the truth of the OT. You can not have it both ways..eithor Jesus is who he says he is..or he is a mad man and a liar.
I believe He is the word and He is truth...
Yes I can. Especially when the bible was written, much like the Koran, by men NOT god. Ask your local minister IF you don't believe me. I mean do you honestly believe that the bible was handed down to man FROM GOD as written BY GOD?! The bible was written 500 years after Christ died and thousands of year from anything in the Old Testament. Jesus could never strike down the Old Testament without damaging his credibility at the time. If Jesus told his followers everything they had heard about the Old Testament was a lie he never would have got the following he did. Jesus knew then what YOU bible thumpers still CAN'T FIGUREE OUT 2001 years later. Being the Son of God does help a lot though in that regard. LOL.
I hope so too!
So your god is a liar huh? Iwould love to know how you can go to communion and call the waffer you recieve god when that god is a liar?
Not a liar but in the same way parents that tells their kids that Santa Claus exists to convey the meaning of Christmas in terms that kids can understand without explaining the heavier concept to kids that it is better to give than receive. You want black and white answers where there is none. I have a much higher concept of god than you do. Where you see a fire and brimstone god that is vain and wants people to grovel on the ground I see a god that is more concerned about helping all life in the universe survive and thrive.
You do not believe in the bible as the inspired word of God..but ..but you take a bread you think is a god into your body and feel somehow connected with a god that lies..
I am not the one that is confused my friend..you would be as happy as a Hindi or Buddhist. The Jesus of the bible means nothing to you !
Oh now it is "inspired" word of god. Well, at least you have made progress. So now why would you believe EVERYTHING in the bible when you a.) know it was written my men centuries ago and b.) know that men are capable of errors, exaggeration, omissions, and outright lies. I mean do you believe in the accuracy of the reporting in the newspapers you read?
The newspaper is not the inspired word of God.Do you really hold scripture with that much contempt? I ask you to consider one more time
If there was no Adam, there was no fall,if there was no fall there was no inherited sin (to you original sin) If there was no original sin there was and is no barrier between God and man..there is no need for forgiveness ....therefore there was no need for God to come to rescue a fallen creation ,and suffer and die on a cross..to bear our sins and our transgressions..
The man called Jesus may or may not have existed ..but either way he could not have been God as he was deluded and a bit mad..(he believed in demons..not very rational) He was also a liar, in that while he had no problem confronting the false teachers ,he found it necessary to lie to his followers . A man that lies can not be God.
But the one thing he said you believe is take and eat..this is my body..he lied about everything elase..he died for nothing ....but he really is forever and always in that piece of bread....
Incredible string of beliefs you have..
Yep, I do. Are you satisfied now?
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