NDEs: When Hell Gets Repetitive

Question from Alexia:
Hellish NDE consistency, potential proof:

Here is Timothy LaFond’s depiction of hell after he was electrocuted and had a near death experience: “Besides the screaming of other people in torment, there were also demons. Yes, there really are demons! I could see their grotesque faces. They came up to me and taunted me with indescribable horror and fear — yelling in my face with such intense volume; things like: “We’ve got you now!” Laughing and sneering at me saying, “We fooled you! We got you now!” … followed by hideous, evil laughter. ” “I somehow managed to cry out to God during this time, pleading, “Oh God – help me!” Again, “God – help me!” “He heard my plea. The right hand of the Lord touched me. I felt His fingers and thumb on my shoulder and He pulled me out of hell. He set me free from not only from the torments of hell,”
[URL removed]

Now this testimony by Joe Hadwin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn-PKUPYCg4&t=1002s

also sees demons who say “I’ve got you now” 9:10 in the video

14:06 he cries out to God, and his hand comes and saves him.

These are only 2 of many similar cases. Evil demons mocking people, beating them up, then they call out to God and a hand rescues them, how is this similarity so possible? How can so many people hallucinate this? They also claim to speak telepathically to God always.
Doesn’t this prove hell somewhat?

Answer by SmartLX:
Sorry Alexia, the first link to Timothy LaFond’s testimony threw up malware red flags so I won’t share it. Folks can find it by putting “precious testimonies timothy lafond” into Google without quotes, at their own risk.

It seems that your only argument for the reality of Hell is the similarity between accounts. As I’ve written before, this is not a strong argument because of the other possible reasons for it:

“One, the standard NDE story is by now traditional and very well-known. If someone who’s at least familiar with it has an ordinary dream or hallucination during a life-threatening situation, it is likely to follow the same pattern as it’s what the victim expects on some level. If there is no memory or a fragmented memory of the period, the existence of this very specific expectation for the experience can shape a memory over time until it fits very well. And if someone just makes up an NDE story, they will deliberately follow the pattern to match the expectation of their audience.

“Two, people going through the physical and mental states associated with near or temporary “death” are likely to have similar physiological reasons to experience certain things, even if they’re not fully understood. The white light in the distance, for instance, is consistent with temporary tunnel vision caused by lack of blood or oxygen to the eyes, growing brighter when the supply returns. Scientific American went into this six years ago.”

Search this site for the keyword “nde”. There have been a flood of questions lately, so there’s a lot to read on the topic. I think you’ll find it informative as a whole.

3 thoughts on “NDEs: When Hell Gets Repetitive”

  1. Alexia,

    Personal anecdotes are not empirical evidence. The number of personal anecdotes do not make the stories more likely. There is no threshold for the number of stories needed before we should start believing them. There are many stories about UFOs, does that make you believe them? There are may stories about Bigfoot, does that make you believe them? If not, why not? Those tales have many similar cases.

    The intrinsic problem with such claims is that they are not verifiable. Which means that every single person claiming them could be lying. That’s not a useful foundation on which we should be trying to determine the truth of something…

  2. There are lots of god-men (unfortunately) in my country of origin (India).
    If you ask any of the disciples of these god-men what they experience during alleged “meditative trances” they will say they see their particular guru helping them out and lifting them up to divinity.

    Now most of these god-men are obviously clever con-artists. Religious organizations being tax free in most countries means a lot of charlatans open a personal one up. So its obvious that the disciples are sadly mistaken.
    But please note – you have a number of matching testimonies from ardent and often innocent disciples. Does it mean that their is truth behind their testimonies or does it indicate some sort of brain-washing?
    Organized religion and common ideas springing out of it is just a similar mass brain-washing. So there are bound to be common/ similar testimonies for various sorts of experiences.

    Doesn’t mean there is god. Just means human beings are susceptible to brain-washing.

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