so far, NO ONE has ever returned from the dead

i know, i know, jesus supposedly arose from death some two thousand years ago, but i don't believe it. why should i? i just can't make myself believe that, along with all the other unbelievable stuff.

i would venture to say that no one has ever returned from the dead, not after four days, not after 2 thousand years. i think we can safely stop waiting for it to happen, and stop pretending that it did.

I'll go get popcorn.

For the record, I believe that Jesus rose from the dead (pssssttt... it was THREE days, not four) after dying for our sins, but I respect your right not to believe that.

Have fun and good morning. :hi:

Since autopsies were generally not done and most modern determinations of death were not available, it is possible that he merely appeared to be dead by the means for evaluating such at the time.

That is an explanation that is possibly consistent with subsequent events - such as disappearing from the tomb. Amny proof of his death ?

I'm thinking death probably didn't take long, especially with all the blood that gushed out when they did it...
Duckie

Okay, no one can walk away from being crucified by the Romans, I assure you.

I saw a (very respectful) documentary on the life of Jesus on Discovery. One of the historians on the show mentioned that there are accounts of people surviving crucifixions. He suggested that Jesus may have survived his "execution," which would have undoubtedly been considered a miracle by his followers.

I'm a Christian myself, but I don't mind hearing others' points-of-view.

I'm sure that, overwhelmingly, people who were on the cross died. There may be some exceptions, but if I was alive 2000 years ago and saw Jesus three days after that, I'd believe I was looking at a miracle.

Although this guy's point was, it HAD happened before -- sooo, maybe Jesus' reappearance after the crucifixion was due to survival, not resurrection.

Have nails in your arms and feet, a spear shoved into your ribs, and a crown of barbed wire on your head. After 3 days, too much blood would have been drained for anyone to recover at all. He died and is still dead. Maybe they seen a ghost or drank Kool-Aid©

So, how can you live with the dissonance of accepting something that if it were disconnected from your faith you would deem highly unlikely??

My cousin Scott toured with the Dead for about seven years. Scott even went to Europe with the Dead on their "Without a Net" tour.
After Jerry died, Scott started to stay home.
Sure, he phished it, and toured with tiny universe for a while, but he most certainly DID return from the dead.

Jesus turned water into wine. I bet he can come back if he wants...

But only because no one ever pounded a stake through his heart.

It's the heartless who are still alive that worry me.

On an entirely lighter note, you might want to check our Peter Hamilton's "Night's Dawn" trilogy (fiction) where the dead come back in their billions, and it becomse a pretty serious mess, I'll tell you.

would they?

of "hits". She does bear an amazing resemblance to some artist's rendition of some guy who no doubt doesn't even vaguely look like Christ, I thought.
I'm sure the velvet painting version will be available soon. :eyes:

from any more pics of La Terri; I broke my own rule :NO MORE reading, listening, looking at pics, or writing about La Teri.....bad for my mental health, ya know.?

lie and cheat and tell everybody that the Grand Deity will merely judge us.

"I don't believe it. Why should I? I just can't make myself believe that..." etc.

your argument essentially is based on the fact that mopaul refuses to believe it, therefore we should all not believe it and stop pretending we believe it.

Not dissin ya, but I have to roll my eyes at your reasoning here.

I could also say that I refuse to believe in Napoleon, because...well...because I refuse to believe in him..therefore everyone else should buy into my circular logic.

Now, by the same token, I don't think there is any absolute proof jesus rose from the dead, either, its an element of faith to believe in it...BUT I don't use the argument:

Jesus rose from the dead because I believe he did, and refuse to believe otherwise. Therefore, everyone else should stop pretending he didn't.

I could also say that I refuse to believe in Napoleon, because...well...because I refuse to believe in him..therefore everyone else should buy into my circular logic.

He meant he doesn't believe Jesus died for his "sins" not that he didn't live. There is evidence that Jesus was alive but just a human and not a god.

Now, by the same token, I don't think there is any absolute proof jesus rose from the dead, either, its an element of faith to believe in it

Exactly. The tale is written as history yet no evidence that he came back to life after 3 days when he lost a lot of blod and damage to major organs. Taking it on faith doesn't change reality. I could believe that Einstein could fly on fire but it doesn't change the fact he couldn't.

Isn't it a tenet that Christians approach it with childish faith even though it goes against common sense that a man can be made a god?

Have you met everyone who ever died?

no one ever died for three days and then returned from the dead.

People "die" and then are revived on a daily basis...usually not for 72 hours though...more like 72 seconds, MAYBE 72 minutes in the extreme case.

Specifically he is refferring to someone that was dead for days on end and came back for nonmedical reasons.

Now of course you could play the absolutist angle and simply claim that perhaps someone did that just never reported the incident or was never made famous. But that is rather unlikely.

I remember meating a cultist that was trying to raise members for his little sect. He was preying upon street kids and drug addicts. He told the story of how he was a cop and got acid splashed in his face. Claimed his eyes were completely burned out of his head. I asked him if that meant everything including the optic nerve was gone. He claimed everything was gone. But then Jesus grew them back for him. Forget coming back from the dead. This would be a medical miracle beyond reasoning. But for some reason no medical journal ever addressed his case. No papers existed concerning it. There was no medical trail about this sleeze ball.

The point of raising this story is that if something so spectacular as rising from the dead were to have occurred there would be countless medical papers concerning it. There may even be skeptical attempts to explain it away. But there is nothing. No record of any incident. And like the burnt out eyes any attempts to claim it had happened should be met with extreme skepticism in the absense of any supporting medical evidence.

does that count?

1.) Has there ever been anyone who were judged to be clinically dead by competent medical personnel in accordance with standard medical criteria, and later regained consciousness?

Yes. Lots of people. Here's one study published in the leading British medical journal, The Lancet

http://www.zarqon.co.uk/Lancet.pdf

And here's an interview with the guy who conducted it:

http://www.stnews.org/archives/2003/oct_feat.html#1

Ok, that's one issue.

2.) Another issue is, has anyone ever died and later given powerful evidence that they continued to exist in some form of conscious afterlife?

Well, the answer is yes.

I knew man called Bob, along with his wife Alice, and his two daughters Alison and Marion. I knew the family quite well because we attended the same Catholic church. Bob died in May 2003. I remain good friends with his widow Alice. Alison, the elder daughter got married in October 2004. Bob appeared to Alison is 'risen glory' while she was alone for a few moments in the bridal suite just before she was due to walk down the aisle with her mother and sister on either arm. It was an overwhelmingly joyous experience for Alison.

Does this prove that Bob continues to exist in some form of conscious afterlife? No, it doesn't prove it. But given the remarkably powerful nature of the experience I wouldn't even understand what it would mean to say that Alison has no evidence that her father continues to exist in some form of afterlife.

I lived in London, England for several years. I knew someone there, an older man and became somewhat friendly with him. One time I went over to his house for a cup of tea. We shared an interest in religion, and in the course of the conversation, he told me that he had once seen the risen Jesus, and explained to me further that though no verbal communication took place, in the course of the vision he knew that Jesus knew everything about him, knew that Jesus loved him with perfect, unconditional love. He found it a wonderfully joyous experience. Does this prove that Jesus rose from the dead and is alive now? No. But again, I think it's just silly to deny that this man had good evidence for the belief that Jesus did so.

I am a friend of a young man who is a gifted student of mathematics at UCLA, and of his father who is from Argentina, and is a retired physics professor with a Ph.D from CalTech. The young man spent the Christmas 2003 vacation in Argentina. On Sunday, December 23, 2003, he went by himself to the local Catholic church for Mass, but upon arriving found that he had made a mistake about the time for Mass, and saw from the schedule that he was one hour early. Rather than return to his father's property, he decided simply to wait in the church. He was looking at a statue of Jesus, when suddenly he realized that he should look towards the other side of the church, and when he did so he had a vision of Mary the mother of Jesus. The effects of the vision lasted for weeks, and included a continued sense of Mary's benign and loving presence. He told nobody of the vision until he returned to LA after the holidays, and the first person he told was me (and I don't know if he told anyone else subsequently). Does this prove that Mary the mother of Jesus continues to exist in some form of afterlife? No. But again, I think it's just silly to deny that this man had good evidence for the belief that Mary does.

I know two other people who have had similar experiences---a lady who is a professor of English at Cal State Long Beach who once had a vision of Mary, and a successful businessman who once had a non-visual but still remarkable experience of the presence of his deceased father which affected him deeply.

So that's just people I know personally who have strong evidence for their belief that persons continue to exist in some form of afterlife.

I have also read various spiritual autobiographies (Thomas Merton, Teresa of Avila, Ignatius of Loyola, Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Siena, Bernadette of Lourdes, etc) which record similar experiences as well as their transformative effects.

In fact, the biographical and autobiographical literature recording such experiences down through the ages and across cultural and religious divides is really rather extensive.

None of it absolutely proves that there really are persons who have died and 'come back' in the sense of communicating with the living. But clearly there occurs a set of phenomena in the experience of many people of sound mind and good will which strongly suggests that there are persons who do 'come back' from the dead; and, at least for the people who are recipients of these experiences, they constitute as good a quality of evidence for this belief as that supporting any other belief they hold, so powerful is the nature of what they experience.

i believe we should keep terri shiavo holding on, hoping for a miracle. and, to be consistent, i believe we should never again bury any body which is even vaguely definable as "intact." and barring that, we keep the parts. if we really believed in miracles, we would be obligated to keep every corpse twitching until it disintegrates. rich or poor, young or old. i demand we start a massive social movement, to build a massive network of "miracle" homes, for life after life.

and further, i demand we never do an organ transplant again, for a miracle could save the donor as easily as the recipient, if not both. no more playing god. when there's *any* doubt, and remember... with god, *all* things are possible... so whenever there is *any* possibility of life, we shall keep the body as intact as we possibly can.

between miraculuosly reconstituting a brain and a body? If there is going to be a miracle does it really need the body hanging around?

given that apparent truth, i'm just pointing out the obvious.

All these people who are so concerned about Terri and the "sanctity of life" and are hyper-religious about it - let's remove all the human-created things that are keeping Terri alive, stand back, and let god work his magic. If it's Terri's time, god won't intervene, right?

One Nikki Six was pronounced dead for some time, allegedly had an out of body experience, then came back to life. The next Christ or anti-Christ, I don't know, but Dr. Feelgood rocked?:headbang: