{"id":3426,"date":"2017-09-19T04:43:09","date_gmt":"2017-09-19T11:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=3426"},"modified":"2017-09-19T04:43:09","modified_gmt":"2017-09-19T11:43:09","slug":"seen-one-nde-seen-them-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=3426","title":{"rendered":"Seen One NDE, Seen Them All"},"content":{"rendered":"

Question from Vlad:<\/strong>
\nHello, was indoctrinated into Christian faith since birth. I have a hard time when people ask me what I believe. On one hand, I trust evolution, I have had difficulties accepting the Bible. The whole idea that religion is a man made construct with “heaven” and “hell” used as a mechanism for controlling populations makes sense. However, in my church, one of the priests told us that hell has been proven to exist. He sent us an email with a few written accounts of religious people who were decent, but drank and partied, and were therefore not accepting God. They then either claim that they may have died and had what’s known as a Near Death Experience or NDE or even dreams sometimes where they encounter hell.
\n
\nI found a multitude of videos where people claim to have seen hell in either a dream or an NDE, and what I realized is that all these reports sound consistent:
\n
\n– falling through a black hole
\n– hearing screams
\n-seeing souls suffering
\n– seeing fire
\n-meeting demons who often say “we got you now”
\n– the demons beat people, and look like reptiles
\n– then the person calls out to Jesus or God, and a light appears
\n-this light saves them
\n
\nThere are many of these kinds of videos:
\n
\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=IOhOynR9Jxg<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=II_3H9O4LSo<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=pmp3UNjeu0k<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=BwFruS4rpdI<\/a>
\n
\nAll of these sound so similar.
\n
\nI wonder how so many people could hallucinate\/dream the same thing, especially this last link was a mormon woman who didn’t believe in hell, and had no exposure to it. How did she experience what so many experience?
\n
\nThey seem so consistent. Being raised Christian, I always pictured hell as a place with dark rocks that people stand on, surrounded by lava and fire, being burned, suffering, maybe meeting Satan, etc. I never pictured there being demons who claim “we got you now” and attack people while mocking them. All of my Christian friends I asked didn’t picture this either, so what gives? Why do all these accounts report reptile horned demons?
\n
\nAny rational thoughts on this?
\n
\nAnswer by SmartLX<\/a>:<\/strong>
\nPut “nde” or “near death experience” into the search function above to find a positive wealth of articles, because it’s been a popular subject lately. In particular, this piece<\/a> addresses your specific question about the similarities between claims. Briefly, there can be very good physical or mental reasons why people experience what they do, and they’re all human beings living in the same society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question from Vlad: Hello, was indoctrinated into Christian faith since birth. I have a hard time when people ask me what I believe. On one hand, I trust evolution, I have had difficulties accepting the Bible. The whole idea that religion is a man made construct with “heaven” and “hell” used as a mechanism for … Continue reading “Seen One NDE, Seen Them All”<\/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":[560,561,6],"tags":[308,690],"class_list":["post-3426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith-2","category-science-2","category-text","tag-nde","tag-near-death-experience"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pB6tr-Tg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3426","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=3426"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3427,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3426\/revisions\/3427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}