...and next up, death.

[cadhla]

Allergic reactions are bad.

Comments

[pbristow]

I think we're actually more in agreement than you realise. My basic point was: We just don't *know* what's really going on in death. The theory I quoted (and it is exactly that: A theory, with so far just enough supporting evidence to render it not easily dissmissible, but nowhere near enough to actually prove it) was one example to illustrate that point. We don't know that it's true, or that it's false, but it's plausible enough and well enough supported that it casts significant doubt on the evidential value of people's recollections of near-death experiences.

Human memory is *always* a flawed representation of reality. Police investigators know this, and it makes their job damnably difficult; I know it very accutely because my short-term memory is particularly wobbly: I have to make sure I reinforce any important information multiple times to make sure it sticks accurately, but being familiar with the problem and its effects enables me to pick up on cases where other people have mis-remembered, and don't realise it, or won't accept it because they think of their memory as "perfect". So given the demonstrable unreliability of a "healthy" human memory, *and* of human ability to interpret experience (not gonna dig up examples of that right now), how much reliance do you really want to place on the memories recorded by a brain that's known to be seriously malfunctioning at the time?

Given just how big and important an issue death is, I don't like to go around giving assurances about it based on unreliable evidence (nor do I find it ethical to allow others to do so, unchallenged - hence this discussion). Which of course puts me in a very tricky position, as an evangelical Christian who wants to pass on the (largely untestable and utterly unprovable!) Good News... =:o\ But my first commitment before God is to honesty, which starts with being honest with myself and others about what I actually do and don't know about everything - including God, and brain chemistry (a hot topic of personal interest right now), and death.

So I have to be very careful how I label all the information I impart: "This is what the Bible says about it"; "This is what I know from personal experience"; "This is what I remember from reading a stack of neurochemistry abstracts online - I may have the details muddled, but the gist of it was this..."

OK, I'm rambling now, so I'll stop there. =:o}

[jemyl]

OK, the fact that you are an evangelical Christian means to me that you may be able to understand what happened to me in the same terms as I understand it. I remember being up in the corner of the room looking down at my body. Charlie's Angels was playing on the TV. It had just come on when I seemed to notice that I hurt so much I could hardly stand it. I remembe praying and asking for relief, just a little from the pain. Then I was up at the TV. Next I was in a nice field of wildflowers with an ancient one in a long robe. He said that I could go up the hill now and never have the pain again. I remember asking if I would be dead then and he said yes that I had lived a good life and done quite a bit to help others. I remember sighing and tears welling up in my eyes as I said something about not being able to see my daughters graduate and asking if I could go back and live long enough to see that. The reply that I got was that there is always more to be done. Then I was no longer on the hill of flowers in the sunshine but back at the TV in the corner of the room. I remember thinking that I looked so peaceful and the voice once more asking if I were sure I wanted to go back and my replying in the affirmative and then kind of swooping back down into my body. Charlies Angels was still on, but I had missed a minute or three of the action. The experience was weird, so much so that I hesitated to tell anyone about it for many years. It gave me a lot of peace, however. Remember, too, that this was in 1979 and that I was being held in isolation because they didn't know what kind of infection I had, staph, strep or what in my wound. It was also before the days of pulsox monitors and the monitoring leads that everyone gets in the hospital now. We have come a long way.

I don't know who the ancient was, but I have since thought that he helped me to be able to communicate with God. Perhaps he was my guardian angel. Oh, and I remember that I had asked him about my soap carving angel that disappeared when I was a child. I asked if the dog had eaten her. He told me that was not the case but he had decided that the world was not ready for what I had carved and why and that he had wanted me to know that the angels WERE aware of what I was doing. That was really weird too.

Perhaps it was a dream. Yet, I do not limit the ways that God can communicate to us. Can you? As both a psychological counselor and a mathematician/scientist I am constantly amazed at the many things we have learned and have yet to learn about our universe. The most important thing to me, and that which binds me to all religions, is the simple phrase "In the Beginning God." The more I have studied other religions and compared them to my own, the more I have seen similarities and places where I am left with the age old question of "Have we, as Christians, attempted to limit God through tradition rather than really look at Him through His message and our experience of the world and other peoples? I don't know the answer. Unlike many Christians, however, I am open to all possibilities. I don't believe that God has stopped talking to us, not by a long shot! I believe that He is alive and well and working in our universe in many, many ways among many, many peoples.