The afterlife?

No, it isn't. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, and someone else's claim to have a religious experience is unverifiable and thus not applicable to anyone except them.

 

I would imagine people in comas and whatnot (the ones who have those types of experiences supposedly) are not the most reliable witnesses, considering that their brains would be on the verge of death at the time.

 

The remarkable thing is that every person who supposedly 'comes back' with one of these stories is that their story is completely compatible with their religion. And only one religion can really be true given their doctrines, so.... a lot of people are lying or delusional.

 

I don't know exactly lol. But I think there's a danger to listening/paying too much attention to those inspirational "people die and come back and tell stories thing"

one of those i heard was this man who was supposedly die, but come back and talk about how satan was supposedly super handsome but filled with hatred, and jesus's eyes look like so much love.

I mean, if God exists, he's not going to give everyone inspirational life-dream.... Because not everyone is "touched" that way...

and while google godvine, I find this

 

I'd like to hear a "near death" story from a staunch atheist, just to see what they have to say. They never make the news though...

I'm pretty religious, so I already believe in an afterlife. But other people's stories are just that - stories. You can let them influence your own opinions for sure. Or you can research (for lack of a better term, although religious research is often aimed more so at conversion rather than education, I find).

In any case; I like hearing about people's death-reversal stories, be they influenced by there religion (why wouldn't they be? Our religious beliefs - or lack thereof - are the basis for anything having to do with death in most cases) or not. I don't think they effect my theories on the afterlife either way.

 

Well In my belief system you don't go to heaven. You are reincarnated. I believe in that.

 

People say a lot of things.

 

There have been cases of atheists having near death experiences than converting to a religion afterwards; that doesn’t mean that there is any truth in those religious beliefs but it has happened.

 

Personally, I think it's complete hoo-ha (to put it nicely). There never has, and never will be, certain undeniable proof of the existence of a heaven. And just having a couple people say they "saw" heaven doesn't make me believe in its existence.

 

There have actually been some interesting neuroscience experiments preformed to try to figure out why people have "out of body experiences" or feel that they have "seen God". There is not conclusive evidence yet that I have seen, but since we do not understand how the brain works very well yet I'm sure the answer will be found at some point.
I personally don't believe there is an afterlife for several reasons.
First off I don't believe we have souls. We are self-aware because of our somewhat unique brain structure (Dolphins and chimps are some other animals that are self-aware). If we have no soul though what exactly is it that goes anywhere when we die? Our brain cells die off from lack of oxygen and we become unconscious.
The traditional ideas of heaven and hell make no sense to me either (not saying people don't believe in other forms of afterlife), but it doesn't make sense to me that someone who robbed a bank and someone like Hitler could both end up in the same place. Or that even if someone is a good person they wouldn't go to heaven just because they didn't worship the correct god or didn't believe in a god. Everything is not so simple as good and evil. So how is it supposed to be decided what is evil enough for hell or good enough for heaven?
This being said however, just because I am not spiritual does not mean I can't get that same feeling of wholeness and purpose out of my feelings towards death. I believe that we live on through the people whose lives we touch and the creations we leave behind. Also, our atoms get spread and decay into other elements and build new things living and non-living. I won't be me after I die, but I will never be gone.....just spread around.

 

It sounds like you believe more in science. I do too but ironically, I read about something a while back where scientists conducted an experiment with a guy who was going to die and they weighed him before he died and weighed him after and even accounting for food and waste, there was a small difference in weights... science to support something mainly considered religious, ironic. Now I am not saying this is proof of a soul and I don't know how credible this is but it is a bit of evidence supporting souls. Just found it interesting

 

I recently watch a really cheesy dated documentary on Youtube about this. It was incredibly silly and supported the idea of people who have seen Heaven and come back. One man claimed to have seen both Heaven and Hell and returned.

I remember I used to love this subject, and believed there could be some truth to it, when I was 5. When I was 5 years old and thought if I chanted the proper incantation to my bathroom mirror, I could open a shimmering gateway to Eternia and visit He-Man.

 

That 'study' was completely incredible. Try to weigh your hand on a kitchen scale and see if you can get a steady number - infinitesimal movements will result in relatively large increases in the measured force. If you were to chop off your hand a weigh it, it will always be lighter because the muscles in it will no longer be moving and exerting force on the scale. The same applies for when an entire body dies.

Additionally it was based on a handful of observations, almost half of which had to be ignored because of bad methodology, and the guy who observed them (Duncan MacDougall) himself admits that they are poor evidence.

Proper repeats of this experiment have found no difference.

 

It sounds like you believe more in science. I do too but ironically, I read about something a while back where scientists conducted an experiment with a guy who was going to die and they weighed him before he died and weighed him after and even accounting for food and waste, there was a small difference in weights... science to support something mainly considered religious, ironic. Now I am not saying this is proof of a soul and I don't know how credible this is but it is a bit of evidence supporting souls. Just found it interesting[/QUOTE]

This is very interesting. We only understand something like 2% of the world around us so maybe someday we will have an explanation for this situation. It could be a data collection error, but it could also be a soul or something else. Only time will tell.

---------- Post added 10th Oct 2012 at 11:38 PM ----------

^ quote fail

 

Near-death experiences have been noted across cultures. However, their interpretations have been widely different and often dependent upon local customs.
To argue for the existence of "going to heaven" or other supernatural or religious experiences is not something that can actually be proven with empirical evidence. Therefore, one cannot argue that such phenomena do exist, nor can one argue that such phenomena do not exist, since there is no proof either way (to do so would be an appeal to ignorance - a classic fallacy).
I personally don't believe that such things occur, and I think that these types of experiences most likely have a physiological explanation which has yet to be proven.

 

I've always believed in the afterlife.

My grandpa has always been extremely afraid of dying, then a couple years ago he almost died in the hospital, and right after he woke up he kept saying "it was so beautiful what I just saw," and he hasn't had any fear of dying ever since. For me, that was the truth that what I had already always believed was indeed true.
I guess for you that's another "stranger's story," and hard to grasp, but for me it isn't.

If you're an atheist, though, and you've never seen or experienced anything like that yourself, then you're in no way obligated to take over someone else's beliefs Just believe what you think it's the truth, there's no way of really knowing it for absolutely sure whatever you believe anyway.

 

A good proportion of near-death experiences appear to be completely psychological, as shown by this study of 58 people who say they had near-death experiences; half of them actually weren't near death, they only thought they were, but they still say they experienced the same things as the others. A placebo effect of sorts.

The idea that this life is just a "practice run" and doesn't matter is an incredibly dangerous way of thinking that has been the enabler for a great many crimes and other horrible events. I know that's not exactly what you said, but it's in the same vein.