{"id":3248,"date":"2017-04-06T03:41:26","date_gmt":"2017-04-06T10:41:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=3248"},"modified":"2017-04-06T04:56:22","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T11:56:22","slug":"the-nde-from-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=3248","title":{"rendered":"The NDE From Hell"},"content":{"rendered":"

Question from Halil:<\/strong>
\nOk, so on YouTube there are a variety of videos on some pro-Christian channels that encompass interviews of Christians who apparently were sinners, did not go to church, drank alcohol, masturbated, etc. and they talk about how they had Near Death Experiences or visions while they were sleeping where they visited hell. Some describe hell as flames with many demons, and very loud screams, others describe it as a dark quiet place without God.
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\nOne experience kind of frightened me. It was about an elderly priest who used to be a firefighter when he was younger. He states that he took drugs often, smoked weed, drank, etc. He said he went to Sunday school for 12 years growing up, but that he never read the Bible. Then he said his parents were not happy that he drank \/ took drugs, so he stopped. One day, he was at work and somehow got electrocuted, and then he said he could still see clearly, suddenly, he saw utter darkness, and had a life review showing all of his sins ever committed. Then he saw demons, which mocked him, and told him “we got you now” very much like the demons in Howard Storm’s NDE story. This priest also saw fires, called out to God, and His right hand came and pulled him out of the fire. Suddenly he was back at work and people came running as they heard him screaming. Then, he went to the hospital, and decided that he knew that hell was real.
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\nWhat do you think could be an explanation of this experience? Do these so called “visions” give any of you atheists chills in case it is right? I am not Christian, but do Christians believe that they would see demons in hell? Because many of these hell stories always seem to have demons that mock God and torture the people experiencing them. Also, how could a brain come up with such graphic imagery?
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\nAnswer by SmartLX<\/a>:<\/strong>
\nThe extreme variety with which Hell is supposedly perceived tells you for a start that most (if not all) of these people are not seeing accurate visions, even if they’re telling the truth about what they remember.
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\nThis priest’s story has him spending a long time unconscious with his body and brain in an extreme state of distress. He sees many of the most well-known elements of the Christian story of the afterlife: a review of his sins, fires and sadistic demons in Hell because he had sinned, the literal hand of God saving him. If he was brought up in a Christian family or community even without believing, he would associate all these images with death and it’s the first place his mind would go in these circumstances whether in a dream or in a hallucination. Of course no Christian dogma states that God will immediately save you from Hell once you’re already sent there; instead that’s the point at which it’s too late to avoid your fate. As a priest, he’ll have had to find a way to reconcile his own story with the doctrine of his denomination.
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\nFinally, brains came up with all the graphic imagery you’ve ever seen in a book, painting, sculpture, movie or video game. Artists see it all in their heads before they create it, and to their great frustration sometimes the images in their heads are much grander than what they can bring into reality. The dream of a brain near death can be a wild place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question from Halil: Ok, so on YouTube there are a variety of videos on some pro-Christian channels that encompass interviews of Christians who apparently were sinners, did not go to church, drank alcohol, masturbated, etc. and they talk about how they had Near Death Experiences or visions while they were sleeping where they visited hell. … Continue reading “The NDE From Hell”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[560,6],"tags":[254,308,67],"class_list":["post-3248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith-2","category-text","tag-hell","tag-nde","tag-near-death-experiences"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pB6tr-Qo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3248"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3250,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3248\/revisions\/3250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}