{"id":3428,"date":"2017-09-19T05:24:17","date_gmt":"2017-09-19T12:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=3428"},"modified":"2017-09-19T05:24:17","modified_gmt":"2017-09-19T12:24:17","slug":"bryan-melvin-another-hell-tourist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=3428","title":{"rendered":"Bryan Melvin: Another Hell Tourist?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Question from Vlad:<\/strong><br \/>\nDo you believe this man? Apparently people say they knew him and that he is totally genuine. They say they went to school with him and he was a total atheist until this experience, where he wrote books about it and became a pastor, but I have my doubts. I feel he may have lied to make a profit.<br \/>\n<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=pmp3UNjeu0k\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=pmp3UNjeu0k<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>\n<strong>Answer by <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/smartlx\">SmartLX<\/a>:<\/strong><br \/>\nBryan Melvin certainly made a profit whether or not he believes his own claims.  It doesn&#8217;t cost much to put out a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/159781380X\/qid=1138278261\/sr=2-1\/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1\/103-4723023-5907035?s=books&#038;v=glance&#038;n=283155\">book<\/a> with a Christian self-publishing company, and the above video is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Hell-Back-Bryan-Melvin\/dp\/B001T9O68S\">on sale<\/a> too.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nAtheists do sometimes convert to Christianity and other religions, so there&#8217;s really no problem with the idea that Melvin was once an atheist.  What&#8217;s important is the reasons why people convert, and Melvin&#8217;s reason is a personal experience which he really has no way to establish as supernatural as opposed to generated by his own brain at some stage during his cholera episode.  If it was real to him, and as intense as it sounds, objective examination of his own state of mind would have gone out of the window very quickly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Question from Vlad: Do you believe this man? Apparently people say they knew him and that he is totally genuine. They say they went to school with him and he was a total atheist until this experience, where he wrote books about it and became a pastor, but I have my doubts. I feel he &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=3428\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Bryan Melvin: Another Hell Tourist?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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}},"categories":[560,6],"tags":[716,254,308,690],"class_list":["post-3428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith-2","category-text","tag-bryan-melvin","tag-hell","tag-nde","tag-near-death-experience"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pB6tr-Ti","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3428","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=3428"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3429,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3428\/revisions\/3429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}