Angel Caught On Tape?

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I just dug up an article showing that human solidarity is not restricted to the faith based
Religious doctors are more likely to consider their profession a “calling” but no more likely to treat underserved patients than their secular counterparts, according to a new study from the University of Chicago.

The study, based on a mail survey of more than 1,100 American physicians,found that 31 percent of doctors who described themselves as religious reported that they serve primarily poor or uninsured communities, compared with 35 percent of doctors who had no religious affiliation.

Those two figures were statistically equal, but other comparisons showed that doctors were more likely to treat underserved populations if they considered themselves highly spiritual, felt that their religious beliefs influenced their medical practice, or said they were raised in a family that encouraged service to the poor.

Women were also more likely to treat underserved populations than men, and differences were also seen among medical specialties, with psychiatrists and pediatricians showing the highest rate and medical specialists such as neurologists the lowest.

But the lack of a difference among those who reported they regularly attend religious services or who consider religion a driving force in their life suggested a disconnect to researchers.

“I think it challenges the religious communities to think about whether they’re helping physicians make the connection between what religion teaches and how they practice medicine,” said Dr. Farr Curlin, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago and lead author on the study, which the Annals of Family Medicine publishes Tuesday.

But Dr. Gene Rudd, senior vice president of the Christian Medical Association, criticized the study’s categorization of people’s beliefs according to a small number of survey questions.

“I would rather have seen some kind of continuum of spiritual commitment,” said. “The data in the article suggests that highly religious and spiritually committed doctors do take care of the poor more.”

Curlin said the questions were intended to measure “intrinsic religiosity,”which he defined as the “extent to which an individual sees religion as acentral motivation or organizing principle in their life.”

He estimated that approximately 20 percent of respondents considered themselves spiritual but not religious.

“There is no objective definition or measure that anyone would agree on as a sign of being spiritual,” said Curlin. “What I think goes into the idea of spirituality for many people is a sense of connection to something transcendent.”

Overall, 26 percent of respondents said they practiced primarily with underserved patients, which Curlin said he found reassuring.

“The glass-half-full interpretation is that a substantial minority of physicians across all these groups, most particularly those who are not religious at all, are caring for the poor,” said Curlin. “Not being religious clearly doesn’t mean that people don’t care about underserved patients.”

Richard Sloan, professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University Medical Center and author of “Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine,” agreed.
According to Sloan, the result supports the view of writers like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins who argue that an atheist can be an extremely moral and ethical person despite not having a religious affiliation.

“This provides evidence of that claim,” said Sloan. “That’s an important finding.”
Curlin previously used data from the same survey to find that the medical community showed high rates of religious belief, and that doctors who are more religious were less likely to present medical options that they considered objectionable, such as abortion and birth control for teenagers.
Doctors' faith disputed as factor in helping poor - Chicago Tribune
 
This is just indirectly appealing to the authority of religious figures, using doctors as an intermediary. Think about how little a miraculous recovery actually tells us: something unlikely happened. So? To see this as a grand proof/justification of God's existence/action/will depends on the prior acceptance of religious beliefs. I'm quite comfortable rejecting that authority.
 
Another interesting NDE

EXPERIENCE DESCRIPTION:

Hallelujah. I love to tell this story, and it gives me physical strength in my body to tell it. When I was still sick and after I was home from the hospital I couldn't keep this back. I would run up to people in town and excitedly try to tell them, Of course, they saw me as the demented person I was at that time. My husband of thirty years left during the time. He found himself a new woman while I was in the hospital three months in Memphis, Tenn. Since he was really the only person I could remember much about at that time, that hurt worse than the sickness. I was being cared for by my four daughters. I am now remarried and much better. Now that I have written all that, I will tell about my trip to heaven.

You must understand there are only a few things on the earthly side which I remember about the three months of being in the hospital. I also would like to tell this. I did not know who I was or where I was then, but scripture I had memorized as a child came to my spirit on many occasions. It comforted my spirit although I had no awareness of my identity. That is important for me to tell, because in Psalms we are instructed to hide the word of God in our hearts that we might not sin against God. The eternal word of God never leaves. I always believed that, but now I know it.

One of the times I died, I remember I was lying in a hospital bed. I was tied to many cords, and I guess life support equipment, monitors, etc. At any rate, I suddenly say darkness pass briefly by my bed. I remember thinking, Darkness, the devil. I'm suppose to flee from him." I was not afraid, but I turned to my left side, probably pulling off my life support machines, because instantly after I turned to my left I was no longer in my bed. I did not see lights, tunnels, or anything like that. I was instantly in another place, a place I did not recognize. I was walking down a dirt road. I felt completely free, full of life, and health. I could move so freely. I could have raced down the road, but I was so curious as to where I was. I was in amazement at the wonderful things I was seeing. On each side of the narrow road were wonderful trees, of the most wonderful greens. The most beautiful trees I have seen in earth cannot compare to the great beauty. The air small clean and pure with just a hint of sweetness. My senses were more sensitive and alive than ever here.

The bright beautiful light did not hurt my eyes at all. It appeared to be dripping beautifully between the trees, almost like it was tangible. I remember saying, Lord, where am I ?" I was in wonderful amazement, but not fearful at all. I kept Walking along the road perhaps about a hundred feet where I found a brake in the trees, and a dirt bank. Still not knowing where I was I walked freely down the steep bank and onto the most beautiful substance I've ever walked upon. The sand by the ocean is pretty white, but this substance I was walking on was so pure it would have probably blinded my natural eyes. It was like walking on the purest crystal. New snow is so white, but it was purer and whiter than the whitest snow. Again, I asked, Lord where am I? I walked out on this white substance and I remember being fully clothed, but barefoot. The white substance felt so cool and refreshing to my feet. In fact it almost tingles like menthol or something.

I walked about 100 feet where I approached a body of water. This body of water was not very wide, The water was the clearest I've ever seen. I remember picking some of the water up with my hand. It did not feel like water. It came into my hand and I could feel great strength and health enter my body. I had a body, strong from the beginning of this trip, but after the water touched it I felt much stronger. (I did not think this then, but now I believe I went to the river which flows from the throne of God where saints go for healing (Rev. 22:1)))

Standing by this body of water I looked across it where I saw the same lovely trees and light and also I saw my maternal grandparents. At that time I decided I was visiting them at their farm in Alabama. They looked exactly as they did when they were alive,. I did not remember at that time, their death in the 70's.They looked so extremely happy and so healthy and strong. They were sitting on a log together in this wonderful forest. That seems funny to me now, but it was perfectly natural there. When I was a little girl and went to visit my grandparents, my grandmother would come to the screen door, clapping her hands and saying "Oh come in, come in." She was doing that in heaven. My grandfather was motioning me to come where they were with his hands. He also was extremely happy to see me. Being extremely excited and happy to see them, I got into the water and started to them. Oddly, there was no resistance as I walked through the water. That seemed strange to me even then, because I swim and know how difficult it is to just walk through chest deep water here. But this was easy with no hindrance. That wonderful substance under my feet lined the body of water. This was a flowing stream, not just a pool of still water. This water was alive and offered life. I don't know how I know that, but I do. When I reached the middle of the stream of water I suddenly was not interested in my Grandparents at all. There was no magic or anything like that. This was real. My interest suddenly left them.

I turned to my right in the midst of that stream and looked straight into the eyes of Jesus. My Savior was standing on the side of the water where my Grandparents had been on a level just a little above me. I shall never forget his eyes. They were dark and so full of love. I knew he knew every thing about me from inside, out. I knew he instantly knew every thought I had ever had, every act I had ever done, everything, totally everything about me. I felt no fear at all. Just the strongest love I have ever felt from anyone anywhere in my entire existence. That love was real and sort of wrapped me up and cuddled me. Not Jesus, but the love which poured from Him to me was almost tangible. I wanted to go to Him. I wanted to fall at His feet and worship Him with everything in me. I started toward Him. When I was almost close enough to touch Him He lifted His Hands like a stop sign. I could see the scars in His hands, or his wrists I should say. I knew that if no one else had ever lived those scars would have been there for me. I felt He had suffered and died just for me. My love for Him became a more personal relationship with Him than ever before. I still have that oneness with Him. I don't believe He is with me ever minute of every day, I KNOW it. When He lifted His hands to me, I knew He wanted me to come back. I did not want to do that, but I was compelled by Him wordless instructions to do so.

I turned and fought literally to get back to the shore of that body of water. It was so easy going in, but I had to fight to get back out, probably because I plainly did not want to do it, but at the same time I was so compelled to obey through the great love He showed me I could not stay at that time.

When my feet touched that which substance again, I was instantly back in my hospital bed with all the heaviness of life on me again and weak and sick. As I recovered this experience was in my very being. I could not speak it or tell it, but I knew it in every detail. After I was out of the hospital and at home, my children had me walk outside to get my strength up. I remember walking along a fence in our front yard, holding it I was so weak. A voice strong and intense literally spoke in my ear that day and told me I was to tell this experience to people. I remember saying, I can't say all that Lord. He answered, You will." He was right. As soon as I could tell it I did--until people got tired of hearing it completely. My husband of thirty years left me right after I was discharged from the hospital. As I already said, My children took care of me and nursed me back to a sort of health. After only a few months past the hospital I met my present husband. He helped me learn to live again and supported me in giving my testimony in churches, and other places. I will never be a nurse again, and I am not under the pressure I was under before my heart attack. Strange things from the earth side have happened to me several times since my adventure in heaven.
 
And another mentioning a possible Angel

Roxie J's NDE


EXPERIENCE DESCRIPTION:

I WAS REAR-ENDED AND CONFUSED, SEEING MY CAR DRIFTING TOWARD THE STOPPED CAR IN FRONT OF ME WHEN MY FOOT WAS COMPLETELY ON THE BRAKE AND I HAD BEEN FULLY STOPPED JUST SECONDS PRIOR. I FELT AS THOUGH I WAS SPINNING AS I BUMPED THE CAR IN FRONT OF ME, AND THEN LOOKING AHEAD I SAW THEM. TWO SEMI'S COMING AT ME FULL FORCE, I COULD HEAR THE JAKE BRAKES, THEY WERE ABOUT 50 FEET FROM ME, ONE IN EACH LANE. I KNEW I WAS GOING TO DIE IN THE NEXT FEW MOMENTS. AND I WAS FULLY OK WITH THIS REVELATION.

THEN MY WORLD STOPPED. I SAW A BRIGHT FLASH OF LIGHT BRIGHTER THAN THE SUN, THERE WAS COMPLETE SILENCE. DIAMONDS WERE IN THE LIGHT SHINING AND FALLING ALL AROUND ME. I WAS SPINNING, FLYING, FLOATING. IT WAS WARM, AND PLEASANT FEELING.

I CAME TO AND REALIZED MY CAR WAS HANGING OFF THE SIDE OF AN OVERPASS, THE AIRBAG WAS DEPLOYED AND I WAS CUT FROM THE GLASS OF THE WINDOWS. I WAS OK. MY HEAD HURT FROM HITTING IT.

MY CAR WAS ON FIRE, AND I COULDN'T GET OUT OF THE DOOR BC MY CAR WAS LEANING SIDEWAYS. A MAN WHO WAS ABOUT 5'4" AND 140LBS CAME RUNNING TO MY SIDE. HE HAD A CLEANLY TRIMMED BEARD, A SOFT VOICE AND STRONG HANDS. HE LIFTED ME OUT OF THE WINDOW AS THOUGH I WERE A CHILD AND CARRIED ME AWAY FROM THE FIRE. HE SAT ME DOWN AND SAID I WOULD BE ALRIGHT NOW. EVERYTHING WAS GOING TO BE OK. HE REMINDED ME OF MY GRANDFATHER IN A STRANGE WAY. ONE I CANNOT DESCRIBE. WHEN THE FIREMEN AND POLICE ARRIVED THE MAN DISAPPEARED AND I HAVE NEVER SEEN HIM SINCE. THERE IS NO ACCOUNT OF THIS MAN, NO ONE SAW HIM, AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW IF HE WAS REAL
 
Well an atheistic friend of a friend once took 800 mg of mescaline chloride and had a spiritual experience, this person knows a decent amount about the universe and their brain presented the intricate connections between the fundamental aspects of the universe like the second law of thermodynamics and the emergent properties such as life and consciousness, they had a conception of the mathematical majesty of a universe constrained by properties which led to the development of complexity, that every aspect from the fusion of atoms in the centre of stars to the consciousness of a human brain all emerge from underlying properties of the universe, that the manifest wonder of the universe is the decoration on the solid foundation of physical laws.

A view of the universe which mirrors that of Spinoza and Einstein, not the product of an anthropomorphic theistic deity, but a pantheistic organism; from which nature, humanity, morality, art and beauty all stem from. An unconscious system of breathtaking complexity which deserves inquisitive wonder, and understanding. This system is so majestic, because as a whole it is unlike ourselves, even though we are a part of the universe it is so strange that what we see around us could be unimaginable (the same cannot be said for angels - magical men identical in form but a bit different in powers betray a profound lack of imagination).

This person experienced feelings of connectedness, the recognition that their very mind was a part of a greater whole, these thoughts had a strong sense of significance, and reverence towards the universe - with the humble acknowledgement that a sincere commitment to finding the facts, understanding the natural world, is virtuous, and that obfuscating that with degradingly unimaginative theology and theodicy commits an evil against human curiousity.

I know that the spiritual experience is not constrained to the faithful, I know that our experience of reality is based on limited information which is reconstructed into a working model by our brains and that we can induce visions and spiritual experiences through a range of avenues. The significance of that experience to that person wasn't supernatural, they understood the drugs mechanism of action and had a little understanding of what they were feeling in biological terms; the meaning was a comprehension of their own convictions, convictions which instill more honest wonder, and free thought, than any religion.

Pulling up the experiences of peoples brains under extreme physical stress validates the naturalistic worldview far more than any religion, peoples experience is shaped by their cultural identity - there is a reason why no ancient Aztec, Greek or Aborigine would have visions of a monotheistic God as they died. You are picking out people who are surrounded with a Christian tradition who, taking them at their word, experienced Christian visions; that doesn't validate any of the claims by your religion any more than it would an ancient Greek who had visions of Hades as they died.

One thing that I am dismissing is the weak reasoning that an interventionist God exists and will preferentially help people who pray the right way, or deserve help slightly more than the other family with a dying child. Statistically children get sick and die, the odds of all of us dying eventually are pretty much 100%, it doesn't make it a good thing, it doesn't mean we should be passive, but it does do away with the fundamentally wrong questions which arise when we assume that there is a higher power which cares for our well being, and will tend to us through extraordinary channels. You posted a disgusting rationalisation of a child's death by declaring that the boys angel wanted to bring him "home", on the basis of your "understanding"? I'm not laughing at it, or glibly dismissing it, it reads like your saying parents should be accepting if not actually glad their child is dead, it sickens me - that explanation is hollow, false, and despicable - although in fairness you have done better than generations of Catholic Priests who had to tell parents their dead unbaptised babies were stuck in limbo due to policy.
 
Well an atheistic friend of a friend once took 800 mg of mescaline chloride and had a spiritual experience, this person knows a decent amount about the universe and their brain presented the intricate connections between the fundamental aspects of the universe like the second law of thermodynamics and the emergent properties such as life and consciousness, they had a conception of the mathematical majesty of a universe constrained by properties which led to the development of complexity, .

congrats to your friend.

this is one of the first realizations of a typical NDE, comprehending the oneness of the universe.

astronauts got it when landing on the moon in the 1960s, some atheists get it after having a NDE and even drunk Irish Rock Stars sing about all of us being interconnected thru a Oneness.

progess:up:

25388104_ccda9f62a7.jpg
 
Thats the point, it was induced chemically by the agonist (mescaline) activating the serotonin receptors in the brain, a physical process which generated the spiritual experience; not by an outside force, not by angels, or any God.

Physiochemical interactions in the brain are the strongest candidates to explain consciousness and perception, that experience only shows that spiritual experiences can be induced physically. Peer reviewed studies (there was a recent study at Johns Hopkins using psilocybin) demonstrate that this is a repeatable phenomena and it is open to scientific examination.

There is some very interesting work on how serotonin receptor density has an inverse correlation with an individuals religiousity, which suggests some biochemical basis for supernatural belief. The evidence doesn't support the existence of angels, or an interventionist deity in the world, perfectly sound physical explanations are out there and your basis for belief is only going to be cut back if you champion the flashes of a dying brain as proof.

There are no angels, we have to help ourselves, waiting for prayers to come true costs lives.
 
Thats the point, it was induced chemically by the agonist (mescaline) activating the serotonin receptors in the brain.....

o.k. then all the non mescaline nde survivors are deluded but a drug induced atheist surviving death has everything figured out and is, of course, correct, got it. thanks:up:

and/or the drug induced atheist's spiritual body seperated from his physical body like sober nde survivors have and experienced the whole onenesss concept of the universe.

his then sober spiritual body returned his physical body allowing him to remember the oneness concept.

no, it's much easier to believe that we evolved from a loose ameba floating thru space that landed in water, evolved onto land eons ago and everything then fell into it's proper place thus setting the stage for a brilliant semi sober bloke w an occassional pencant for pornography from down under to post his musings and postulations on a U2 message board that his ideas work better than most of mankind's.:up:

got it.

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No, this person took a tiny quantity of an alkaloid extracted from a plant and did not have a near death experience, the risk of death would have been on par with ingesting a jam sandwich.

The point is that a physical interaction in the brain produces the types of experiences which you cite as proof of the supernatural. The experience itself has no intrinsic meaning about the nature of the universe because it is grounded in the persons own limited understanding of reality; which is exactly why I am not basing my world view on the self-reported experiences of drugged out hippies or religious people who experience minutes oxygen deprivation or other stresses in their brains. There experiences hint at brain processes, but an individual has very little insight into their own consciousness or brain processes and isn't giving a full picture of what is going on; its clearly an area deserving of more study.

Spiritual experiences can be produced under controlled circumstances with proper ethical oversight using physical means, the light at the end of the tunnel matches pilots reports of black-outs due to oxygen deprivation during high g maneuvers, every report you produce either fits a mundane explanation (e.g. a good samaritan helping at an accident scene but getting lost in the confusion) or a very cool neurological one (distortions in perception by brains under physical stress).

The explanatory power of the scientific explanation, and the fact these phenomena can be replicated, is very persuasive evidence against your supernatural suppositions. My argument isn't appealing to any authority, there are very large gaps in knowledge about the interactions which generate perception and consciousness, but it fits what is known and doesn't introduce anything which is in principle unknowable.

When you say that angels are impossible to quantify, your argument looses its veneer of credibility. You explicitly box it off from scrutiny and investigation, ignore the explanatory power of observation and experiment and keep producing it to validate a god of the gaps hypothesis, in regards to angels.
 
Next try and explain this one away:

A well-known example is that of the woman Maria who was paying a first time visit to Seattle, when she had a heart attack. She was rushed to the Harbourview Hospital where resuscitation procedures were initiated. While Maria's body was being worked on by the medical staff she experienced leaving her body. She floated upwards some 4 stories and came out onto the roof of the hospital. There on the ledge of the roof she saw an old sneaker with a worn little toe and one lace tucked under the heel. When the resuscitation procedure had proved successful Maria came to and was quite preoccupied with her vision of the sneaker. She wanted somebody to check if this sneaker was really there. She managed to persuade the social worker Kim Clark to go check and directed her to a window from which the shoe could be seen when leaning out. Kim Clark reluctantly humored Maria, as she had always been very skeptical of the NDE. However, Clark easily found the correct window and there, indeed, lay the sneaker on the ledge with the worn little toe and the lace tucked under the heel just as Maria had described it.

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Maybe so, but that only brings the dissociative state that people experience as out-of-body experiences into a physical framework. If you entertain the concept that peoples soul or aura is actually leaving their body you generate a lot of problems; namely the transmission of information to the conscious mind (sensory inputs like eyes and ears are pointless if an immaterial soul can take information directly from the surrounding environment, the effects of drugs (how can a drug acting on a physical organ - the brain - alter the state of an immaterial consciousness), and the innumerable questions about the origination of a soul (are the number of souls finite, do animals have souls, which animals have souls, how did souls evolve, why are they necessary for explaining mind etc).

You really don't seem to consider these issues in any detail. Your conclusions seem unjustifiable, the correspondence between chemically induced states of consciousness and the spiritual experience is a strong piece of evidence for a naturalistic/scientific position. This thread has centered around self-reports and a suspiciously glarey photograph, all of which are explainable without making unjustified assumptions about an afterlife and supermen.
 
Next try and explain this one away:

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You produced an anecdote by Kimberly Clark Sharp, I found an article dealing with this very story
In 1984 Kimberly Clark (now Kimberly Clark Sharp) reported a sensational case of apparent veridical paranormal perception during an NDE. Seven years earlier, in April 1977, an out-of-town migrant worker known only as "Maria" was admitted to the coronary care unit of Seattle's Harborview Medical Center after a heart attack. Three days later, Maria had a second heart attack while still hospitalized and was quickly resuscitated. When Clark came to check on Maria's condition later that day, Maria reported an OBE where she witnessed her resuscitation from above, noting printouts flowing from the machines monitoring her vital signs. Next she reported becoming distracted by something over the area surrounding the emergency room entrance and 'willing herself' outside of the hospital. She accurately described the area surrounding the emergency room entrance, which Clark found curious since a canopy over the entrance would have obstructed Maria's view if she had simply looked out of her hospital room window. Maria then became distracted by something on a third-floor window ledge on the far side of the hospital, 'willing herself' to this location as well. From this apparent vantage point, she noted a left-foot man's tennis shoe on a third-floor window ledge. She described the shoe as dark blue with a worn-out patch over the little toe and a single shoelace tucked under its heel. To corroborate her story, Maria asked Clark to go look for the shoe (Clark 242-243).

Unable to see anything from outside the hospital at ground level, Clark reports, she proceeded to search room-to-room on the floor above Maria's room, pressing her face hard against the windows to see their ledges. Eventually she came across the reported shoe in one of the rooms, but insisted that she could not see the worn-out toe facing outward or the tucked-in shoelace from inside the room. Clark then removed the shoe from the ledge (243). Kenneth Ring and Madelaine Lawrence hail the report as one of most convincing cases of veridical paranormal perception during NDEs on record:

[T]he facts of the case seem incontestable. Maria's inexplicable detection of that inexplicable shoe is a strange and strangely beguiling sighting of the sort that has the power to arrest the skeptic's argument in mid-sentence, if only by virtue of its indisputable improbability (Ring and Lawrence 223).

This case has taken on the status of something of an urban legend, allegedly demonstrating that Maria learned things during her OBE that she could not have possibly known about other than by actually leaving her body. But as Hayden Ebbern, Sean Mulligan, and Barry Beyerstein make clear, the details Maria reported were in fact quite accessible to her through ordinary sense perception and inference.

In 1994 Ebbern and Mulligan visited Harborview to survey the sites where the NDE took place and to interview Clark. They were unable to locate "Maria" or anyone who knew her personally and suspect that she is now deceased (Ebbern, Mulligan, and Beyerstein 30). They examined each of the details of Clark's report and found the case much less impressive than it has been made out to be. First, after being hospitalized for three days, Maria would have been quite familiar with the equipment monitoring her; so her perception of the printouts during her OBE may be nothing more than "a visual memory incorporated into the hallucinatory world that is often formed by a sensory-deprived and oxygen-starved brain" (31). Second, her perception of details concerning the area surrounding the emergency room entrance were of details that "common sense would dictate"—such as the fact that the doors opened inward, accommodating paramedics rushing in patients who need immediate attention (31). Moreover, she was brought into the hospital through this very entrance—albeit at night, but the area was well-lit—and could've picked up details about it from normal sensory channels then (31-32). The fact that rushing ambulances would traverse a one-way driveway, too, is something anyone could infer from common sense. Finally, Maria's hospital room was just above the emergency room entrance for a full three days before she had her OBE, and "she could have [easily] gained some sense of the traffic flow from the sounds of the ambulances coming and going" and from nighttime "reflections of vehicle lights" even if she never left her bed (32).

But what of the most persuasive aspect of her report—her description of the celebrated shoe? How difficult would it have been for her to learn these details without having left her body? Ebbern and Mulligan set out to determine exactly that:

As part of our investigation, Ebbern and Mulligan visited Harborview Medical Center to determine for themselves just how difficult it would be to see, from outside the hospital, a shoe on one of its third-floor window ledges. They placed a running shoe of their own at the place Clark described and then went outside to observe what was visible from ground level. They were astonished at the ease with which they could see and identify the shoe.

Clark's claim that the shoe would have been invisible from ground level outside the hospital is all the more incredible because the investigators' viewpoint was considerably inferior to what Clark's would have been seventeen years earlier. That is because, in 1994, there was new construction under way beneath the window in question and this forced Ebbern and Mulligan to view the shoe from a much greater distance than would have been necessary for Clark (32).


As the authors note, what was a construction area for them in 1994 was a high-traffic parking lot and recreation area back in 1977, providing an even better view of Maria's shoe than the one they saw so easily. Their 1994 'test shoe' was so conspicuous, in fact, that by the time they returned to the hospital one week later, "someone not specifically looking for it" had noticed it and removed it (32). It is quite likely, then, "that anyone who might have noticed the shoe back in 1977 would have commented on it because of the novelty of its location" and Maria could have heard such a conversation and consciously forgotten about it, incorporating it into her out-of-body imagery (32). Moreover, even if no one had seen it from the ground level, Ebbern and Mulligan tested Clark's claim that Maria's shoe was impossible to see from inside the room unless she pressed her face hard against the glass looking for it. This claim was found to be wanting:

They easily placed their running shoe on the ledge from inside one of the rooms and it was clearly visible from various points within the room. There was no need whatsoever for anyone to press his or her face against the glass to see the shoe. In fact, one needed only to take a few steps into the room to be able to see it clearly. To make matters worse for Clark's account, a patient would not even need to strain to see it from his or her bed in the room. So it is apparent that many people inside as well as outside the hospital would have had the opportunity to notice the now-famous shoe, making it even more likely that Maria could have overheard some mention of it (32).

The authors add that anyone who did press his or her face against the glass to get a closer look at the conspicuous shoe from inside the room could easily see the worn-out little toe and tucked shoelace: "we had no difficulty seeing the shoe's allegedly hidden outer side" (32). They conclude:

[Maria's shoe] would have been visible, both inside and outside the hospital, to numerous people who could have come into contact with her. It also seems likely that some of them might have mentioned it within earshot....

[And Clark] did not publicly report the details of Maria's NDE until seven years after it occurred. It is quite possible that during this interval some parts of the story were forgotten and some details may have been interpolated.... [Moreover], we have no way of knowing what leading questions Maria may have been asked, or what Maria might have "recalled" that did not fit and was dropped from the record (32-33).


Furthermore, Clark's inaccurate account of how difficult the shoe was to see from both inside and out provides evidence that she subconsciously embellished significant details to bolster the apparently veridical nature of the case (33).
Hallucinatory Near-Death Experiences

That investigation undercuts the idea that the claim is incontestable, it must be noted that the JREF offered a lot of prize money for people who could demonstrate paranormal abilities in mutually agreed controlled conditions, this would include astral projection (e.g. somebody projecting their consciousness and identifying a random group of objects inside a box). This simply didn't happen, there is no persuasive evidence supporting astral projection and your case (which you presented without context, or critical review) is one more failed piece of spiritualist propaganda.

Here are some abstracts from the journal of NDE studies, which seems to have some editorial input from believers
“Does Paranormal Perception Occur in Near-Death Experiences?”

ABSTRACT: While most near-death researchers have disregarded reports of near-death experiences (NDEs) with hallucinatory features, many have sought cases of veridical paranormal perception during NDEs. But despite more than a quarter century of near-death studies, no compelling evidence that NDErs can obtain information from remote locations during their NDEs has been forthcoming. This paper, Part I of a critique of survivalist interpretations of NDEs, reviews the quality of the evidence for veridical observations during NDEs, and finds the case for veridical paranormal perception during NDEs wanting.

“Near-Death Experiences with Hallucinatory Features”

ABSTRACT: Though little systematic attention has been given to near-death experiences (NDEs) with clear or suggestive hallucinatory features, reports of such experiences strongly imply that NDEs are not glimpses of an afterlife. This paper, Part II of a critique of survivalist interpretations of NDEs, surveys NDEs incorporating out-of-body discrepancies, bodily sensations, encounters with living persons and fictional characters, random or insignificant memories, returns from a point of no return, hallucinatory imagery, and unfulfilled predictions. Though attempts to accommodate hallucinatory NDEs within a survivalist framework are possible, they signal a failure to take the empirical evidence against a survivalist interpretation of NDEs seriously.

“Psychophysiological and Cultural Correlates Undermining a Survivalist Interpretation of Near-Death Experiences”

ABSTRACT: This paper, Part III of a critique of survivalist interpretations of near-death experiences (NDEs), considers psychophysiological and cultural correlates of NDEs suggesting that such experiences are solely products of individuals’ minds rather than windows into a transcendental realm. While current psychophysiological models do not fully explain out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and NDEs, several psychophysiological correlates offer promising clues about the mechanisms implicated in their production. These correlates do not definitively identify their precise causes, but strongly imply that such experiences represent internally generated fantasies rather than genuine perceptions of a transcendental environment. Additionally, stark differences in the phenomenology of NDEs from different cultures have been uncovered. Though non-Western samples are too limited to draw anything more than tentative conclusions, the available data suggests that prototypical Western NDE motifs derive from a cultural source, consistent with the hypothesis that NDE content reflects social conditioning and personal expectation rather than the perception of an external reality.
 
yes animals have souls.

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What about plants, fungi, protozoa, bacteria and archaea?

Where do you put the line, these life forms all have the same types of biomechanical machinery, is a deer worthy of a soul but not a frog, a frog but not a fish, a fish but not an amphioxus, an amphioxus but not a sea squirt, a sea squirt but not a coral polyp, a coral polyp but not a sponge?

And thats just the metazoans.

What about synthetic life forms? Does a bacterial cell which is built in a lab from a computer database and DNA synthesiser have a soul? Would a hypothetical human made in the same fashion have a soul?

Those are pointless questions, a lot of animals don't even have brains let alone consciousness. An immaterial soul is a classic example of bad thinking, it is impossible to quantify and makes no difference whatsoever to the workings of our brains/minds.

In the immortal words of Daniel Dennett, "Yes, we have a soul, but it's made of lots of tiny robots!", the sense of self, our moral compass and our very nature is the product of the 100 billion of neurons packed into the human skull and the incredible emergent properties they have
 
You produced an anecdote by Kimberly Clark Sharp, I found an article dealing with this very storyHallucinatory Near-Death Experiences

That investigation undercuts the idea that the claim is incontestable, it must be noted that the JREF offered a lot of prize money for people who could demonstrate paranormal abilities in mutually agreed controlled conditions, this would include astral projection (e.g. somebody projecting their consciousness and identifying a random group of objects inside a box). This simply didn't happen, there is no persuasive evidence supporting astral projection and your case (which you presented without context, or critical review) is one more failed piece of spiritualist propaganda.

Here are some abstracts from the journal of NDE studies, which seems to have some editorial input from believers

Word to you: God doesn't show off miracles to convert those that lack the faith to believe in Him, unless you have a pre ordained calling like the Apostle Paul. Your guys will have no takers. God doesn't do parlor tricks, Chriss Angel does.



Are you calling Kenneth Ring a liar? A researcher of 20 years ?
The story is told in his book in it's entirety:

ring_lg.jpg


Kenneth Ring is an educated professor from the University of Conn. for 30 years.
He visited the hospital himself too.


I'm sure the migrant worker spotted that shoe up 3-4 stories with the red worn out tennis shoe with the pinky toe being worn thru and shoe lace tucked under the sole before entering the hospital just so she could fake her clinical death and then dupe Kimberely Shore.

Yeah, that's it.

I would buy your theory of evolution before I bought the Ebbern and Mulligan spin.

I don't mind a skeptic but refusing to be reasonable is neurotic.

For giggles sakes have your guys explain this one away:

People Born Blind Can

See During a NDE



Dr. Kenneth Ring's NDE Research of the Blind

Vicki Umipeg, a forty-five year old blind woman, was just one of the more than thirty persons that Dr. Ken Ring and Sharon Cooper interviewed at length during a two-year study just completed concerning near-death experiences of the blind. The results of their study appear in their newest book Mindsight. Vicki was born blind, her optic nerve having been completely destroyed at birth because of an excess of oxygen she received in the incubator. Yet, she appears to have been able to see during her NDE. Her story is a particularly clear instance of how NDEs of the congenitally blind can unfold in precisely the same way as do those of sighted persons. As you will see, apart from the fact that Vicki was not able to discern color during her experience, the account of her NDE is absolutely indistinguishable from those with intact visual systems. The following is an excerpt from Dr. Ring's latest book reprinted by permission.

Vicki told Dr. Ring she found herself floating above her body in the emergency room of a hospital following an automobile accident. She was aware of being up near the ceiling watching a male doctor and a female nurse working on her body, which she viewed from her elevated position. Vicki has a clear recollection of how she came to the realization that this was her own body below her. The following is her experience.

I knew it was me ... I was pretty thin then. I was quite tall and thin at that point. And I recognized at first that it was a body, but I didn't even know that it was mine initially.


Then I perceived that I was up on the ceiling, and I thought, "Well, that's kind of weird. What am I doing up here?"


I thought, "Well, this must be me. Am I dead? ..."

I just briefly saw this body, and ... I knew that it was mine because I wasn't in mine.


In addition, she was able to note certain further identifying features indicating that the body she was observing was certainly her own.

I think I was wearing the plain gold band on my right ring finger and my father's wedding ring next to it. But my wedding ring I definitely saw ... That was the one I noticed the most because it's most unusual. It has orange blossoms on the corners of it.


There is something extremely remarkable and provocative about Vicki's recollection of these visual impressions, as a subsequent comment of hers implied.

"This was," she said, "the only time I could ever relate to seeing and to what light was, because I experienced it."


She then told them that following her out-of-body episode, which was very fast and fleeting, she found herself going up through the ceilings of the hospital until she was above the roof of the building itself, during which time she had a brief panoramic view of her surroundings. She felt very exhilarated during this ascension and enjoyed tremendously the freedom of movement she was experiencing. She also began to hear sublimely beautiful and exquisitely harmonious music akin to the sound of wind chimes.

With scarcely a noticeable transition, she then discovered she had been sucked head first into a tube and felt that she was being pulled up into it. The enclosure itself was dark, Vicki said, yet she was aware that she was moving toward light. As she reached the opening of the tube, the music that she had heard earlier seemed to be transformed into hymns and she then "rolled out" to find herself lying on grass.

She was surrounded by trees and flowers and a vast number of people. She was in a place of tremendous light, and the light, Vicki said, was something you could feel as well as see. Even the people she saw were bright.

Everybody there was made of light. And I was made of light. What the light conveyed was love. There was love everywhere. It was like love came from the grass, love came from the birds, love came from the trees.


Vicki then becomes aware of specific persons she knew in life who are welcoming her to this place. There are five of them. Debby and Diane were Vicki's blind schoolmates, who had died years before, at ages 11 and 6, respectively.

In life, they had both been profoundly retarded as well as blind, but here they appeared bright and beautiful, healthy and vitally alive.

And no longer children, but, as Vicki phrased it, "in their prime."

In addition, Vicki reports seeing two of her childhood caretakers, a couple named Mr. and Mrs. Zilk, both of whom had also previously died. Finally, there was Vicki's grandmother - who had essentially raised Vicki and who had died just two years before this incident. In these encounters, no actual words were exchanged, Vicki says, but only feelings - feelings of love and welcome.

In the midst of this rapture, Vicki is suddenly overcome with a sense of total knowledge.

I had a feeling like I knew everything ... and like everything made sense. I just knew that this was where ... this place was where I would find the answers to all the questions about life, and about the planets, and about God, and about everything ... It's like the place was the knowing.


As these revelations are unfolding, Vicki notices that now next to her is a figure whose radiance is far greater than the illumination of any of the persons she has so far encountered. Immediately, she recognizes this being to be Jesus. He greets her tenderly, while she conveys her excitement to him about her newfound omniscience and her joy at being there with him.

Telepathically, he communicates to her.

"Isn't it wonderful? Everything is beautiful here, and it fits together. And you'll find that. But you can't stay here now. It's not your time to be here yet and you have to go back."


Vicki reacts, understandably enough, with extreme disappointment and protests vehemently.

"No, I want to stay with you."

But the being reassures her that she will come back, but for now, she "has to go back and learn and teach more about loving and forgiving."

Still resistant, however, Vicki then learns that she also needs to go back to have her children. With that, Vicki, who was then childless but who "desperately wanted" to have children (and who has since given birth to three) becomes almost eager to return and finally consents.

However, before Vicki can leave, the being says to her, in these exact words, "But first, watch this."

And what Vicki then sees is "everything from my birth" in a complete panoramic review of her life, and as she watches, the being gently comments to help her understand the significance of her actions and their repercussions.

The last thing Vicki remembers, once the life review has been completed, are the words, "You have to leave now."

Then she experiences "a sickening thud" like a roller-coaster going backwards, and finds herself back in her body.

Such reports, replete with visual imagery, were the rule, not the exception, among Ring and Cooper's blind respondents. Altogether, 80% of their entire sample claimed some visual perception during their near-death or out-of-body encounters. Although Vicki's was unusual with respect to the degree of detail, it was hardly unique in their sample.

Sometimes the initial onset of visual perception of the physical world is disorienting and even disturbing to the blind. This was true for Vicki, for example, who said:

I had a hard time relating to it (i.e., seeing). I had a real difficult time relating to it because I've never experienced it. And it was something very foreign to me ... Let's see, how can I put it into words? It was like hearing words and not being able to understand them, but knowing that they were words. And before you'd never heard anything. But it was something new, something you'd not been able to previously attach any meaning to.



"Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there's a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see." - Helen Keller
 
I find it interesting, diamond, that you are now appealing to authorities which are eminently "educated" and so on when the rest of the time you like to accuse such people of elitism. Hypocritical, but unsurprising.
 
I'm selective in the intellectualism I subscribe to here, for reasons greater than the finite.

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Word to you: God isn't doesn't show off miracles to convert those that lack the faith to believe in Him-unless you have a pre ordained calling like the Apostle Paul. Your guys will have no takers.
Then why do you feel the need to jump over these cheap tricks? Is your faith in God that weak that you need continuous reinforcement through magic tricks? What sense does it make for an omnipotent God to keep everybody in the dark about miracles, direct violation of the regular laws of nature - except when he needs to convince people to throw some money towards faith healers and Christian publishers.
Are you calling Kenneth Ring a liar? A researcher of 20 years ?
The story is told in his book in it's entirety:

ring_lg.jpg


Kenneth Ring is an educated professor from the University of Conn. for 30 years.
Your getting rather defensive, Ring has done some good research and his journal published materials don't draw any conclusions about the existence of an afterlife.
He visited the hospital himself too.


I'm sure the migrant worker spotted that shoe up 3-4 stories with the red worn out tennis shoe with the pinky toe being worn thru and shoe lace tucked under the sole before entering the hospital just so she could fake her clinical death to then dupe Kimberely Shore.

Yeah, that's it.
And this is the reflexive attitude, either somebody is telling the gospel truth or they are a malicious liar. It is not unlike C.S. Lewis and his mad, bad or god argument in regards to Jesus. The fact is that Kimberly Shore has an agenda, she wants to believe in life after death, and might make some money through her books, and those claims have to be critically assessed. I am not saying that she is a liar, but it is entirely possible that as a believer she doesn't approach instances in a wholly critical fashion.

Given the lack of detail in the report, and the subsequent investigation which showed how readily Maria, or a visitor, could have seen the shoe there's is a potential mechanism for her to know about the shoe without any supernatural event. You are positing the existence of an afterlife and you don't even want to produce the best possible evidence, you don't seem to want a bulletproof case for your beliefs, and manage to track down examples with enough ambiguity and misrepresentation to render them useless.

If you want to produce a respectable claim why not take a randomly printed number, put in in an envelope and place it inside a safe, have neither the experimentalists or subjects know the number and then have them astrally project into the safe and identify what the number is; if the subjects can remotely identify the number at a statistically significant level then there may be something going on. As it stands these sorts of double blind studies into ESP don't show any powers, astral projectionists don't do any better than people who just guess numbers.

I would buy your theory of evolution before I bought Ebbern and Mulligan spin.
It doesn't matter what I believe; evolution is a fact, just like gravity is a fact; and natural selection is a very powerful explanatory theory to explain the facts. It wouldn't matter if I was a bible bashing creationist, it wouldn't stop me from being part of the natural world.

If I tell you that I have magic water which stops cancer would you believe me? Why shouldn't you? Can you conceive of other areas where you might be exploited?

There are important reasons for taking a sceptical attitude, it isn't unreasonable to doubt extraordinary claims and it doesn't leech away the wonder of the universe. Scepticism improves your comprehension, prevents you being exploited by others, and allows you to make informed choices.
I don't mind a skeptic but refusing to be reasonable is neurotic.
Replication, falsifiability, peer review and explanatory power are things which I think are useful. Its perfectly reasonable to expect phenomena to be demonstrable, otherwise we would have to take every claim at face value - or worse - on the basis of which proponent is more charismatic.

Don't twist words beyond their meaning, advocating critical thinking is reasonable and fair, it's only biased against thing which don't exist.
For giggles sakes have your guys explain this one away:
She describes her body, and her ring; two things which she already has a sense of in her brain. She couldn't discern colour, this is an important detail, it suggest that the labels which most people attach to visual information weren't developed (although hearing, tasting and feeling colours is a well documented phenomena; due to the connection between the sensory regions of the brain).

We have a body map which helps us relate ourselves to other objects, to coordinate our motion. This exists in blind people, she already had a sense of her body including shape. Her vision of herself may reflect the model of her surroundings which she constructed in her mind, there is nothing in the claim suggesting she was receiving new information, all of it matches what she knew in advance and what she might anticipate having during an NDE.

No new information + activity in her latent visual system = new perceptions (a sense of sight) of the world model inside her head.

I can only give the weak analogue from the friend of a friend who has experienced synesthesia, and had visual hallucinations of auditory inputs - they effectively saw music, with regular colour associations to different notes; this was not something they experience in their day to day life and showed novel interactions in the brain, it is notable that these were seen when the eyes were shut in a completely dark room. It isn't impossible to see things in space without actually having a visual input.

You keep throwing anecdotes, which are published for the public without peer review and are marketed to reinforce peoples belief system. The NDE literature is marketed to people who want to believe, they offer anecdote, not original research, and usually fail to give a proper context to what is going on inside peoples brains.

I'm not the closed minded one in this argument, I am entertaining the possibility that NDE's represent the edge of an afterlife. but that hypothesis is relegated to insignificance because it doesn't explain anything - the explanatory power of a naturalistic model rests in the potential to explain what is happening to produce the effects in the mind; these are very unconstrained at the moment, but the questions are fantastic and have big implications for understanding consciousness.

You like NDE reports, here is a wonderful example from an expert who actually experienced one, and who is vastly more knowledgeable than I
YouTube - How it feels to have a stroke
It only goes for about 20 minutes and is a perfect example of an NDE, she explains what happens as she had a stroke and what she knew as it was happening.

It also shows off some really cool science.
 
Why is everyone's religion right? Are there any cases of an NDE where a Christian is informed by the many armed Elephant god Ganesh that it's not their time?
 
Based on what I've read about research into NDEs in India, the content of NDEs seems to be culturally mediated whether the individual in question is religious or not (for example, Indian subjects don't report experiencing panoramic overviews of their lives, viewing themselves from outside their bodies, or being drawn up to the 'next world' through a tunnel of light, all of which are very common in Western NDEs, regardless of whether the individual is religious).

Also, I kinda doubt anyone anywhere sees Ganesh in their NDEs :wink: ...he's not a figure Hinduism would prime you to expect to see upon dying. I've certainly never read of any Indians seeing him in an NDE.
 
Why is everyone's religion right? Are there any cases of an NDE where a Christian is informed by the many armed Elephant god Ganesh that it's not their time?

I can only hope and pray that some day...:love:

Perhaps I can fist bump Buddha too.


Speaking of everyone's religion being right.
I wonder if anyone has had such an experience, where as they go towards the light, all of a sudden Siva appears, "surprise! you chose the wrong religion, sucks to be you christian/muslim/sikh/jew boy/girl!! Ha ha!"
 
I think all religions have different degrees of Truth, some more than others.
The more spiritual a person is, the closer he or she will progress towards God in the hereafter.


I think polictical machinations and fear mongering here on Earth instituted by man slow a person's growth towards God or sometimes turn them off all together.
God being just and fair will take all of those circumstances into consideration.

The reality is: God has an eternity to wait for you, and is more merciful than most people realize-it's up to us to decide when to move forward.

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So many to choose from..

I shopped so many religions, Unity, Preysbertainism, Luthernism...many more.

I came to LDS/Mormon and we understand all people will have an oppurtunity to learn of Christ's Gospel in this life or if they haven't here in the next life.

I'm comfortable with that idea, and feel it to be true-most Christian Faiths do not teach that.

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Thanks for answering.

Although, you realize from a merely comparative standpoint - if as you say, all religions retain some element of truth - and that particular aspect that you mention is an oddity amongst the religions (or at least Christian ones you tell me? I would say it's similar to some other religions that believe in differing forms of reincarnation)- that it has a great probability of being untrue?

Assuming of course that there is one truth, and over time that truth has been acquired and integrated into different belief systems leaving only remnants behind. Those aspects that are prevalent across many groups would likely represent the original truth.

That is not to say some groups may retain certain outliers.
 
Thanks for answering.



Assuming of course that there is one truth, and over time that truth has been acquired and integrated into different belief systems leaving only remnants behind. Those aspects that are prevalent across many groups would likely represent the original truth.


I think one day we'll be able to connect the dots and realize the competiveness of different religions here on earth was an affront to God.

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