- Joined
- Oct 7, 2011
- Messages
- 6,840
- Reaction score
- 3,840
- Location
- UK
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Independent
You'd need some statistics to back up that "many" though I'm not sure that'd even be possible - there isn't enough scientific rigour in the investigations in these kind of claims and, as I say, we can't account for anyone who has these experiences but it's never documented.Actually many were atheists or not very religious and become so after.
No, that is literally not possible. For someone to report such an experience, they must have brain activity. That means there must be a period between the time they had little or no brain activity and them being awake and capable of speaking. I see no reason to assume that the experiences (or memory of them) couldn't be generated during that recovery period.Well, there are other documented cases of experience when the brain is inactive.
I don't think anyone is claiming these people are lying. I certainly think that as least most of them are being perfectly honest in their reports of what they recall. What is being challenged is the assumed source of those memories, such as the case in the OP where the Neurosurgeon claims his experience is proof for the existence of Heaven. There is absolutely nothing to support that assumption on the basis of the information presented. There are other hypotheses which are at least as likely explanations for the phenomena.You can say they were all liars, every person who has claimed this, and there have been many, but really it's not productive to just blindly deny it.
Not while it's perfectly possible that these memories are generated entirely within the brain.What it does argue against is the notion that the sum of a person (or the self) is the brain.