What do you guys think of this? (Atheist converts after Hell NDE)

[jimmorrisonbabe]

 http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=8&ved=0CF4QFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.godreports.com%2F2012%2F03%2Fatheist-professors-near-death-experience-in-hell-left-him-changed%2F&ei=8vjNT9CODams0QWEo-iRDA&usg=AFQjCNEJgy7rHd-HelsGdtdx0dZ3FbSSxA

[xSilverPhinx]

It happens, religion and the thought of afterlife offers existential comfort:

Yet the thought of death scared him. "I was terrified of dying because it meant lights out, the end of the story," he notes. "It seemed horrible that at 38-years-old, when I felt powerful and successful in my life, it would all come to an end in such a ridiculously pitiful way."

I wouldn't trust a dying and extremely stressed brain though. Some odd things come up, such as:

Suddenly he heard people outside the room calling for him by name. They spoke English, without a French accent, which seemed strange, because everyone in the hospital either spoke French or heavily accented English.

He then imagines what his fate will be, influenced by what believers say about non believers (nevermind that it makes no sense whatsoever) and then to resolve that uncomfortable feeling:

Then he was surprised by a small voice inside his head that said, 'Pray to God.'

He thought, 'I don't pray. I don't even believe in God.'

Then he heard the voice a second time, 'Pray to God.'

He lay there motionless for a few moments, completely spent. Then he was surprised by a small voice inside his head that said, 'Pray to God.'

He then decides to pray and:

When the people around him heard his attempt to pray, they became enraged. "There is no God and nobody can hear you," they cried, along with other obscenities. "If you keep praying we will really hurt you."

LOL This looks like the left hemisphere chiming in...

But Howard noticed something curious. The more he prayed and began to mention God, the more they backed away from him.

Psychologcal discomfort solved.

As he lay there, Howard began to review his life. "I came to the conclusion I led a crummy life and I had gone down the sewer pipe of the universe. I had gone into the septic tank with other human garbage. I was being processed by the garbage people into garbage like them."

Defense mechanism installed, with a touch of born-again fanaticism. Wants good reasons for staying a theist after conversion because it offers him existential comfort, massively reinforced by the idea that it was god who saved him from death, which he desperately tried to avoid by negotiating (praying).

Feelings of self-loathing and hopelessness filled his mind.

Cultish message which is still very persavive in some religions. Tells people they're filth and offers them a way out of that.

His thoughts floated back again to himself as a nine-year-old in Sunday School, "I remembered myself singing "Jesus Loves Me," and I could feel it inside me. As a child, I thought Jesus was really cool and he was my buddy and he would take care of me."

No comments. That's just weird coming from an older man. Probably associates his destructive behaviour with the lack of a father figure, which happens to some people, even grown adults, who in the lack of a father figure, become very destructive (pardon the extreme guessing here ).

Immediately he recognized Jesus, the King of Kings, the Rescuer, the Deliverer. "His arms reached down and touched me and everything healed up and came back together," he recalls. "He filled me with a love I never knew existed."

Pity he doesn't mention what this Jesus looked like...like the portrait commonly found of a european white man?

"He could read everything in my mind and put His voice into my head," Howard recalls. "We had very rapid, instantaneous conversations."

Psychological simulacrum, which is very different from actually feeling like there is somebody actually waching.

*edited to add: he posted a picture he drew of Jesus

[jimmorrisonbabe]

I was thinking it's all psychological mechanisms as well, I wouldn't trust a dying brain either :p these things seem to happen in cultural context as well, like an atheist living in the middle-east could claim they've seen Allah in an NDE or something...

[jimmorrisonbabe]

Or a muslim, i just meant an atheist conversion like the one in this story.

[xSilverPhinx]

I was thinking it's all psychological mechanisms as well, I wouldn't trust a dying brain either :p these things seem to happen in cultural context as well, like an atheist living in the middle-east could claim they've seen Allah in an NDE or something...

Yeah those things make you wonder.

Of course I don't actually know if it really happened and all, but I find these things to be rather suspicious, and would rather trust explanations based on things we know happens than on a claim made by an inherently flawed organ under massive stress. I don't see it as arrogance on my part, it's way more reasonable.

[Sandra Craft]

Suddenly he heard people outside the room calling for him by name. They spoke English, without a French accent, which seemed strange, because everyone in the hospital either spoke French or heavily accented English.

Then he was surprised by a small voice inside his head that said, 'Pray to God.'

He thought, 'I don't pray. I don't even believe in God.'

Then he heard the voice a second time, 'Pray to God.'

He lay there motionless for a few moments, completely spent. Then he was surprised by a small voice inside his head that said, 'Pray to God.'

When the people around him heard his attempt to pray, they became enraged. "There is no God and nobody can hear you," they cried, along with other obscenities. "If you keep praying we will really hurt you."

So many of these NDEs (both with and without religious content) sound like nothing more than vivid dreams that I wonder why that explanation that they come from basically the same place never seems to occur to believers?

[Genericguy]

They spoke English, without a French accent, which seemed strange, because everyone in the hospital either spoke French or heavily accented English.

He's from Kentucky, so I'm guessing they had Kentucky accents. In the afterlife we all have "babel fish" in our ears to convert accents to our native accents.

[Firebird]

So many of these NDEs (both with and without religious content) sound like nothing more than vivid dreams that I wonder why that explanation that they come from basically the same place never seems to occur to believers?

This. I'm also guessing that a lot of the "religious" experiences of people were nothing more than hallucinations, responses to conditions like schizophrenia, etc. Same for those cases where people claimed their loved ones were possessed by the devil or something like that; probably some mental condition that was not understood at all at the time.

[xSilverPhinx]

They spoke English, without a French accent, which seemed strange, because everyone in the hospital either spoke French or heavily accented English.

He's from Kentucky, so I'm guessing they had Kentucky accents. In the afterlife we all have "babel fish" in our ears to convert accents to our native accents.

+1 for the Hitchhiker's Guide reference

[Genericguy]

Here is a random google search for muslim near death experiance...

http://theislamawareness.blogspot.com/2009/04/near-death-experiences-and-islam.html

And one for Hinduism near death experiance...

http://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=6726

If we believe all the nde stories, then you have nothing to worry about. It seems that what ever religion you choose is the correct religion.

[Ali]

Is it mean that the whole thing made me giggle?  Like, I'm sorry that he was sick and in pain, but the whole account was just so....corny and hamfisted.

I loved the part about "Unfortunately he was in a country with socialized medicine...."  and that whole spiel about how no doctors work on the weekends.  Am I the only one that is a tad skeptical about the idea that France doesn't have functioning ERs on the weekends? 

[Genericguy]

He also wrote a book about his experience, "My Descent Into Death," which he says was written primarily to non-believers

Matthew 19:21 Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.

He claims to have met the person who said that! I found no hint of the word "nonprofit" anywhere online.

[Recusant]

I've been trying to find out what a "double atheist" is, and am not having much success. The caption to the image for this article from The Sun mentions "double atheism," but it's not explained in the story. It must be something that only very special atheists know about.

[Sandra Craft]

I've been trying to find out what a "double atheist" is, and am not having much success.

Me either.  All I could find were atheist double standards and atheists living double lives (pretending to be religious).  Really, when people invent terms its only common courtesy to provide definitions.

[Ali]

Maybe "double atheist" is like having a double negative in a sentence.  "As a double-atheist, I don't not believe in god."  Which would explain the rest of the story nicely.