God and Religion Talk

No, I'm not kidding.

One night about ten years ago my husband got up to go the bathroom in the night. He said that when he came back into the bedroom, he saw a figure in the darkness, sitting on my side of the bed. Naturally he thought it was me. However as he came nearer, he realised that I was still in bed asleep. As he watched, the figure stood up, turned away, walked along by the side of the bed, round the end and then disappeared. He said he didn't feel frightened or upset. There was no malevolent vibe from the figure; he had the impression it was watching over me with some concern or protectiveness.

What do you think he saw?

He saw nothing. He just wanted to impress you with his spirituality and to give you something to talk about with your friends the next day.

He loves you more than he is telling...A man seeing ghosts is one in a million...Hold on to him...If you eliminate the effects of alcohol...nobody...

Say hi from me.

He knows me too well to think he could get away with stories of that kind.

Then there was my grandmother's cousin. He was an only child; he was killed in a car crash one morning. He was in the building trade and was going to a job in London (they lived about fifty miles away). He had to make an early start before his parents were up as he was getting a lift in a van with some other lads. When his mother went down to the kitchen to make breakfast at the usual time, there he was. 'Michael! What are you doing still here?' And he answered her 'Everything is all right Mam, don't worry, but I have to go now' and then he went out the back door and that was the last she saw of him. But he had already been killed earlier that morning having been picked up as arranged at the appointed time.

Now the woman was a devout Catholic and would never make up a tale like that.

The cases of NDE prove only one thing: That the brain reacts to the lack of oxygen, imbalance of chemicals and electricity, but not the existence of an afterlife.

A milder condition, such as abruptly getting up from the bed while dehydrated, could easily result in a vision that the brain was exposed to in the past.

The problem with claiming supernatural is that the claimant must show that other such events were also supernatural.

A toothless woman in Peru gets the flu, falls to her knees, and prays to JP2. After a week, her flu is gone. Miracle!

No. It happened to millions without prayers. Even atheists...

Also, what about her teeth? Did JP2 overlook them, or he did not have the license to practice dentistry?

What I described is not an NDE. but leaving that aside for the moment, the theory you posit as a possible explanation of NDEs is not sufficient. How does one explain the patient who dies on the operating table and after being revived can tell the doctors what was going on in other parts of the hospital while he was 'dead'? Or who can tell us that 'The phone that Dr Jones lost is on the window sill in the staffroom'

There was a very eminent British neuro-psychiatrist and neruo-physiologist who said that he himself thought NDEs were a lot of nonsense, as he said 'the sort of thing that happened in California' until one of his patients had the experience. He only died in 2024, so his research was very up to date in terms of the scientific explanations available.

Here are a couple of interviews with him that I hope you'll watch. In the first video he is discussing the topic. Very interesting and well worth watching. In the second, there is a point at which he mentions the phenomenon of the 'death bed coincidence' where the dead person visits a loved one shortly after death. The funny thing is that he recounts the story of a woman visited by her son, very similar to what happened with my grandmother's cousin, his words to his mother were almost the same.

The thing is that we are all going to die, so it's a topic that is of interest to all of us and it's something we don't discuss enough in a calm and rational way. I'm not afraid of dying/being dead. As Peter Pan said (the one in J.M.Barrie's book, not the Disney abomination) 'to die will be an awfully big adventure'. My fear is around the manner of death, I wouldn't like it to be too sudden or violent but I also wouldn't like to spend years in a slow decline having witnessed it in my own family. I think what would be least upsetting for my family is also very important. 'Died peacefully at home after a short illness' would be the sort of thing I think I might go for!

NDE's are totally fascinating, but even more so are OBE's...."out of body experiences"!

How can some neurological storm in the brain explain the experience to see ones body from a position it has no former experience to draw upon? To see and hear things in other places, this immobile, unconscious body isn't even in the vicinity of? To observe and even later report what happened around the body even as seid body should had been absolutely unable to?

Now such stuff can't be explained away with "things happening in the brain due stress or drugs"....

Very much so.

There are so many things that sceptics dismiss now that science may tell us more about in the future.

As far as science goes, we are still in its infancy.


Nor can the way some people know the moment someone close to or significant to them has died, no matter how far away that person is geographically. That happens to me sometimes.

Wow....man, I envy you so much! I can only read about it...till now....

Worth mentioning that it isn't a joyful thing.

Yeah....okay....my last post can be misunderstood that way, sorry!

No worries.

It's stronger the closer the connection. The most detailed and somehow deepest and most unambiguous was the death of a parent, the most striking (and physical) was when a very close friend who I'd been out with all day (I'd gone home earlier than him due to work the next day) was run over by a car on his way home.

Usually it's milder and sort of feels like a moment of clarity with that person right there. I've come across people, often hospital staff, saying the same thing.

Some demon.

Very unlikely. I'd have to be saintly to attract the attention of demons :)

In the same way, some can compose music and write books that nobody has done before them.

We can create things, not just recall what has already happened.

@Atch

Fascinating videos.I am 68 years old and as I get older these theories become ever more intriguing.

Demons, by definition, are supernatural.

Since "supernatural" doesn't exist, neither do demons. Only TV preachers, charlatans, and 20-buck readers with bad accents for that extra mystery from a shlthole called Transylvania.

So...Just open the door, walk right in, turn the lights on...no demons...That's why we have a light switch right by the door - to undemonize things quickly...

This conversation would be even more entertaining where K-graders congregate...

Novi.....thing is that technology, the new ways to connect with each other globally, that everyday people can and do post their "supernatural" experiences has led to this phenomenon, that NDE's and OBE's are more and more reported and talked about, even studied.

For most of human history NDE's and other "unearthly" experiences had been the mainstay, often even the reason, for beliefs and whole religions! Tightly controlled by powerful hierarchies for centuries.
Now everybody can report them and listen to them, worldwide....it leaves the tightly controlled circle of book religions, and enters the interest of science...its like a new world waiting for us to study and learn about.

I have no idea where it will lead us to, if we even should know about it so much, as there is a reason we are born in this body, with a kind of "veil" over our memories....just calling the rising masses of people becoming interested and asking questions all liars or dummies isn't going to cut it anymore....

And there is that thought that all of us, when our time comes, will definitely know the truth...when we move on...is there only darkness and nothingness or is there another world waiting for us, outside of and totally independent on our dead bodies?

My problem with miracles and NDEs is like the one with UFOs. They always happen to the people we would never invite to dinner or lend 100 bucks to.

Still waiting for a UFO to land in the middle of Times Square with thousands watching...Instead, it's always in the middle of nowhere...

"Yes, I saw them ... those green men ...they just left..."


No. The only thing that was real was the man whose name was Jesus...Everything else is fabrications, hallucinations, lies, and damn lies.

No, there is no Heaven, Hell, God, Satan, or angels.

There is no reason for any of the above to be secrets visible or audible only to some of us. "God spoke to me..." says some azzhole who will later spend years in a fed slammer for fraud.

If I created life, I would not confine it to a little speck of dust like the one we are riding on...and hide me from my flock. I would be on their asses daily to make sure they don't fvck with my grand design. Police stations never close for exactly that reason.

No, I would not give humans "free will" because only very few know how to use it properly. That's why we have cameras on every corner and in stores.

In fact, I would make sure that a human who decided to do something evil to another human, or especially to a child, would immediately burst into flames and die screaming as a warning to others.

Amen.

Agreed, as these are totally human tries for explanations! Nothing more, nothing less...

The real thing will be most probably not even understandable with our small brains we got with these bodies...

Imagine being a little fish in some aquarium in some room....even if the fishies in that aquarium looking out to the other side of the glass will somehow get that there is something else outside, will they ever comprehend that their little aquarium-world is confined to that room? That there are so many other rooms outside, apartements, skyscraper, cities, countries populated with even more strange beings?
No...they won't....they are not made for that to comprehend!

....doesn't mean the whole other world outside doesn't exist!

And we are only fishis looking out of our world, trying to make sense of the happenings outside of our aquarium, Novi....to declare our world is the only one ever and always is not smart! :)

But that's not so Novi. My grandfather had an NDE. He was a soldier, with fourteen years service in the British Army, and after discharge managed to start a business, operate it for forty years and retire with enough cash to buy the dream house by the sea. His NDE happened when he was over seventy and was a passenger in a car crash. There are plenty of sensible, capable people who have had an NDE.


Dr Fenwick is worth listening to for many reasons. Firstly his credentials. He was one of the foremost authorities on epilepsy and head of the UK's Neurophysiology, Sleep, and Epilepsy Unit at the Institute of Psychiatry and Maudsley Hospital, the chief psychiatric hospital in the UK. He was
also a professor neuro-physiology at Kings College, London and a consultant for Broamdoor, dealing with the criminally insane. This is not a man who is going to listen to daydreams, fairytales and imaginings and accept them as reality and this is a man who will assess these stories on a clinical basis. The fact that he had qualifications in both the psychiatry and physiology of the brain places him in a unique position to do that.

Secondly his decades of proper, academic research and the fact that he studied the dying, because as he pointed out, you can't ask a dead person anything, but you can observe those who are dying.

And finally his very calm, very British if one might say so, approach to the topic.

There is really nothing extraordinary about the idea that consciousness continues after we die. It seems quite logical to me. One doesn't need to believe in God, to believe in continuing life. In my view the whole thing is cyclical, not chronological, time too, I really don't think that time just runs in a straight line because that would suggest an end point and there isn't an actual end to time, it just carries on.

@Atch
Not necessarily, if weak enough could try to possess to use as a tool against somebody you deem a saint.

Regarding the post about the unknown person. I would bet it could be somebody close or dear to them that hasn't let go and is acting as a guarding spirit. Possibly a toxic phantasma, a guardian angel or spirit guardian wouldn't reveal itself like that.

More like a touch on the shoulder when you feel unease and need protection, would be from your guardian spirit.

Atheist - someone who doesn't believe in God.

Agnostic - someone who is "neutral" and claims they don't know if God exists.

Satanist - someone who doesn't believe in God and actively denies Him, mocks Him, or curses Him. This is a person who has committed the only unforgivable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit and is destined to Hell.

Note: Just because someone doesn't actively worship satan doesn't mean anything, because in hell, satan will be the one god who forces worship.

From my observation, you are in the third category. I and other people have warned you about it many times, but it is clear you choose hell. You can still save your soul, but time is running out fast.

Many psychiatrists, especially those who have worked in large hospitals with long term patients, say they have come across things involving patients that they do ńot have an explanation for.

The British Premonitions Bureau is interesting to read about.
" In the hours that he spent in Aberfan, Barker was struck by "several strange and pathetic incidents" connected with the coal slip. Bereaved families spoke of dreams and portents. On the eve of the disaster, an eight-year-old boy named Paul Davies had drawn massed figures digging in the hillside under the words "the end." Davies died in the school."

newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/04/the-psychiatrist-who-believed-people-could-tell-the-future

It would be my grandfather. My mother saw him twice in the years after he died. He always worried about us when he was alive so he'd keep an eye on us after he went, I'm sure of that.

One of my teaching colleagues in Ireland had an experience when she was training to be a teacher and was sharing a flat in an old house in Dublin with a couple of other girls. She went into her bedroom one night and was about to switch on the light when she saw the figure of an old man kneeling by the bed praying. She was too scared to sleep there for a few days afterwards, but the other girls said 'ah sure he's only an aul fella saying his prayers. He's harmless' so she went back and slept there, but always with the door open and a lamp on :) she never saw him again.

If you chat to people you'll find that a lot of people have either seen or experienced something strange at some point in their lives. It's quite normal. I had a couple of strange experiences myself.


That is interesting indeed.

I would advice for all your family members to pray for his soul to put him to rest. Otherwise his worries might continue unnoticed.

Quoting:

There are an incomprehensibly vast, essentially uncountable number of stars and planets in the universe, with estimates suggesting over 10²⁴ stars (a septillion) in the observable universe and potentially trillions of planets per galaxy, leading to numbers like 300 sextillion (3x10²³) or more, far exceeding the grains of sand on Earth, with the total universe likely containing vastly more.

All of that didn't exist until one guy, let's call him God, created it...so I am told.

Here is the first problem: What was there before he did? Space or something else that served as a building material? If the latter, then God didn't create anything, but rather changed the shape and chemistry of what was available. If so, who created the building material God used to create the Universe?

Next problem: If God created the Universe, at some point, he stopped creating. What was the last object attributable to God directly? Or is the process still ongoing?

And this: Stars, planets, and rocks are simple objects. Kids make them with ease, playing in the snow. Why stop there? Why didn't God create anything more complex...like a wrist watch...I mean by himself, not a proxy, aka man.

Human ignorance is not a license to claim the supernatural. When somebody steals a bicycle, and we don't know how, when, or who, we have no basis to claim ANYTHING beyond that the bike is missing and the kid who just got it is upset. No, it was not God, regardless of what the thief says to the judge later...

All good questions....and showing how deeply we are shaped by our historical religious teachings....but the answers might very well be very different!

I personally don't think there is only one allmighty entity, nor something like eternal heaven or hell....but for us humans it was a working explanation...and worshipping/fearing something we don't understand was somewhat logical for millennia...thats all!

Just "alien" and "other dimensions" might be another, more modern ways of explanation....but both stand for something otherwordly that made itself known to humans since our beginning, and seemingly is a fact to accept (and to study).

Different cultures and worldviews have different ways of looking at things.


We may well know a lot more in the future. Depending on our species' limitations about perception. As Steven Hawking said, the Universe isn't just stranger than we know, it's stranger than we can know.

Right now, we should just record it all in writing since that data may be useful in the future.

Definitely!

.....and looking for similiarities...differences in these experiences....for some rules, regularities...anything which might help us to get a grip on this.

Thank you for your kind concern. We had the usual perpetual Mass enrollment and so on after he died. My grandmother died six months later so I'm sure she's kept him on the straight and narrow :) and my mother joined them a few years ago so I'm sure they're all fine. However, I will continue to pray for them all of course and I'm sure they're praying for me.

My granny actually saw him in the classic 'deathbed visitor' phenomena that Dr Fenwick mentions. She was in a nursing home by then and very frail, so we decided not to tell her he had died. She was slipping in and out of consciousness and asked why he didn't come to see her so we said he wasn't well but would come when he was better. One day, several weeks later, she said 'Your grandad was here! You told me he wasn't well but he looked wonderful He was wearing his navy blue suit' (That was his 'best' suit). 'He told me not to be getting upset about being in this place, I'll be going home soon and that he'll come for me when it's time'. She died shortly after. My mother also saw him before she died. People will say they were imagining it but at the moment there is no agreed explanation in the medical community for the reason these things occur. Until there is, I'll accept them for what they appear to be.