Have you had a major change of belief?

That 's right.





David

While I am not suggesting that you hold this belief, I definitely don't think a near death experience (NDE) and the consequential delusions involved is an adequate reason to change belief. These people's conversions are understandable, however, because delusions can seem all too real to the deluder. The only problem is they're far less convincing to everyone else.

When I was young, I was extremely drawn to the rational aspects of agnosticism. In fact, I identified myself as an agnostic for many years. It was only after I had spent some time in college majoring in humanities and liberal arts that I began to understand that the world has considerably more facets than reason alone can explain. At that point I began to open my mind to the possibility that some sort of God just might exist after all. I studied the Christian faith on my own and came to accept it. In the years since, my faith has been tested and confirmed many times.

Interesting. I think that once a person has fully realised atheism, one doesn't go back. Agnosticism is quite a different thing to atheism.

Reason can only function effectively
when the logician is in possession of all of the operative facts.





David

How did u decide to deem them delusions ?





David

Well I'm not a phychiatrist, so I wouldn't know, but I definitely think having an NDE and experiencing a red man with a pointy fork would qualify, wouldn't you?

I was born into the Swedish Lutheran church, baptized, confirmed and married there. We had religious instruction at school or better Knowledge about Christianity which is a bit different.
I was not very interested in going to church nor a strong believer, sometimes critical and a doubter.
After living in rather reformed countries I must admit I certainly do not like neither the reformed churches nor their representatives - clergy or not.
I like to go to a beautiful Swedish church, I enjoy the perfect lithurgy, I really feel at home there and feel Swedish.
I am still a doubter now and then and I also can be critical about certain things going on the church but I know where I belong, I feel close to my church and I would never change to another denomination.
When living or visiting a reformed country I go to a Catholic church if I go to church at all.

I agree with both your points, and would add that once a person has approached a fully realized belief in ANY philosophy, one rarely goes back.

I'm glad you've found a home, saab.
Too many people never do.

That's true, unfortunately.

See, this is the problem with perception. It is so clear to me that God does not exist, but then my certainty is not unique to athiests, an then even if it was it wouldn't mean anything. What makes me different from a person who says they know God exists? In my perception, I am right, but how do I know that I am not only deluding myself? It is impossible to know. A deluded person doesn't know that they are deluded, as their delusions are as real as reality, and therefore indistinguishable.

I used to scoff at people who said that they know God exists. "How can you know that God exists?", I would say. "That's preposterous." Now I can understand them, in an ironic sort of way.

A friend of ours is like you an atheist. It is vey easy to discuss theology with him as he knows the subject. He by studying has come to the conclusion there is no God.
There are people who know there is a God who are impossible to discuss with as the only reason is their belief and they have very little knowledge about theology.
Sometimes I wonder if our belief in a life after death is based on our personality more than our religious side. People with tendency to pessimism don´t think there is a life after this. People who are optimistic would then think there is a life after this.

Not if some of the NDEs were objectively verified.

As a result of some NDEs, people have been disinherited,
upon the basis of conversations overheard by decedent
out in the waiting room, away from the scene of death.

I have posted several times an account related to me at a
dinner party for discussion of the works of Arthur Conan Doyle,
in Mahanttan around 1993:
my hostess, Mary, said that she 'd have to absent herself early
therefrom because of the impending demise of an old friend,
who was in a state of apprehension qua his future.
Her friend at our table, Mary Francis, seated to her left,
mentioned that back in the 1950s, she was in a hospital
in Florida, having great difficulty giving birth, when she expired.

She said that her consciousness thereupon rose and observed
emergency efforts to revive her by medical personnel.
She said that she drifted around to the back of the hospital,
where she saw her 5 year old son awaiting his mother,
seated at the top of wooden stairs leading down into the
back yard of the hospital. She said that she saw a female
black cook emerge and begift the boy with a slice of cake,
then descend to the yard and pull down a miniature banana
from a tree and give it to him. She said that her thoughts
then turned to her daughter in school several miles distant,
whereupon she arrived in her classroom and observed a
written spelling test, and that her child had misspelled
a word (because thay did not have fonetic spelling
like thay shud have). She said that she was then invested
with emotional pain at the imminent loss of her family,
and then found herself back in hospital room of her death.
She said that she joined in her body and revived.

She said that her attending physician was enuf of a scientist
to wish to know what is was like to be dead. Having been
informed of her disembodied adventures, he called up the
cook, who confirmed the cake n banana.
She said that her husband ventured forth to their daughter 's
school, where the teacher confirmed that a spelling test
was administered at the time in question, and the daughter
came home with the misspelled word.

I 'd be interested in any additional incidents of confirmation.

Tho I don t remember any NDEs of myself,
I have had a few (very brief) out of body experiences.




David


P.S.:
Tho hellish circumstances have been described,
no one yet has referred to red men nor to forks
that I know of.

Both parents were new-deal democrats.... My mother was actually a delegate at that 68 convention in Chicago; in theory I was supposed to be a lifelong liberal democrat. It took me something like six or eight years out in the real world after school to think my way out of all that. Not that I've ever found any sort of a way to love the Republican party or anything like that, but I positively despise the dem party and vote against it.

Likewise, my parents were New Deal Democrats.
Thay voted for Roosevelt n Truman.
I innately rejected limitations on personal liberty.
Libertarianism and individualism sprung naturally from my mind.

I convinced them both to vote for Barry Goldwater in 1964,
and I drove them to the polls for that purpose.





David

Don't you think it is possible that some NDEs are hoaxes? There are thousands, millions of supernatural and impossible claims every year. Most are discounted by the general public by common sense and normal skepticism, but for some reason when somebody starts shouting NDE, everyone comes running. In any case, the majority of the scientific community regards NDEs as hallucinatory.

I've just skimmed through THIS DOCUMENT- you can read it in full if you are unconvinced - but this is a real and normal scientific report of NDEs being replicated using ketamine. There are also substantial theories explaining NDEs and out of body experiences, but since they are, after all, just theories, I thought it would be better to primarily offer physical proof that NDEs are merely physiological.

I don't think it is quite as simple as that, though there is a degree of, dare I say, desperate hope involved in belief in an afterlife. There are many other aspects involved such as natural skepticism vs gullibility, how rational the person is, the degree to which a person will deny the facts of life etc. Excuse my angle, I know it's there, but there isn't a better way to put it, and if I tried to offer both sides I would just be lying to myself.