Atheists: A hypothetical for you...?

Stories like that have not been recorded by any credible publication.

Of course you made up some details. Doctors pronounce life and death, not EMTs, as an ambulance doesn't carry the necessary equipment.

Plenty of people have come "back to life" after being pronounced dead. That's why the medical community constantly updates the standards to determine what will count as "medically dead" and states update their standards to determine when legal death can be declared.

And people always blame the "miracle" on whatever religion that the person already knew about (and, usually, already believed in).

Stuff like this is why anecdotal evidence doesn't count. Every religion has their miracles, and we have no idea what the actual medical condition was at the time. Only a double-blind study works, and Temple University, conducted that a few years ago. Their conclusion is that prayer has no effect on recovery and knowledge that a person is being prayed for actually makes recovery even less likely. The full experimental report can be found here:

http://www.mowatresearch.co.uk/uploaded_documents/...

Gee what a great story. But how exactly was it recorded?

I bet you heard that from a friend of a friend. Meaning the details are greatly exaggerated, and it probably didn't happen as they remember it. If they were in a state of panic, in shock or in pain, it's likely their memory of the event isn't correct. Especially if they had a head injury.

Even if parts of the story are true, how do you know the EMT simply called the person dead too soon? It happens.

Like drowning victims. There were numerous cases in the past, when someone who drowned was pronounced dead, but their core body temp was low. Once the warmed up, the seemed to "spring" to life. Now drowning victims are never pronounced dead until they are "warm and dead".

Edit:

I don't dismiss stories like that of the book "90 Minutes in Heaven", I just question the details.

I read the synopsis. The EMT pronounced him dead on the scene because he couldn't find a pulse. That doesn't mean he didn't have a pulse, just that the EMT couldn't find one.

So even he can't even prove beyond a doubt, that he was actually dead. All he can say, which makes for a great story, is that he was thought to be dead!

So anything he claims to have experienced while "dead", could be explained as a very vivid waking dream, brought on by oxygen deprivation because of an extremely low pulse.

There is no reason for me to jump to the conclusion that a god saved him.

Edit 2:

Of course my next question would be if God is so great, why would he allow this guy to be involved in the horrible car crash to begin with?

It always baffles me that God is ALWAYS credited for saving lives, but never condemned for taking them. God kills more than he saves.

Please give specifics. Otherwise is is purely hypothetical or hearsay.

A hypothetical for you...?

Lets say you're turning on a busy intersection with a loved one in the car and all of a sudden you are blind sided. Next thing you know EM T's and firefighters are pulling you out of the vehicle and you see your loved one on the ground. You realize that they've been pronounced dead. Then you see someone come over to them and lay their hands on them and begin to pray. Absolutely nothing happens. The man/woman who prayed walks off never to be seen again. Do you buy it? Do you completely dismiss it? Do you want to believe? How do you think you would respond in such a situation?

This happens a lot more.

P.S. anyone who says that someone is lying on the ground with a white sheet over them is lying. EMS do not carry white sheets to cover dead people with. If the body was found to be clearly dead then EMS would leave it alone for the accident investigators, if it was not found dead then they would be working on the body trying to revive it.

It sounds like you are repeating urban rumour. (AKA lies.)

I would think the following:

1. The EMT was wrong to pronounce my loved one dead in the first place.

2. I wouldn't doubt my loved one's testimony that the mysterious person said something involving the word Jesus, but I would never think there was any cause and effect relationship here.

3. I would hope my previously atheist loved one didn't all of a sudden become religious after such an experience. That would be devastating.

I would think that the person wasn't actually dead and that they just happened to wake up when the stranger came over to them. There was a case like that on Trauma last night. They were telling one guy stories because he wanted to write a book about weird EMT stories. One of them had a guy who was face down in water, and he was pronounced dead by the other EMT and the receptionist at the hospital. This guy worked on him all the way to the hospital, and they thought that the guy had died from the codeine cough medicine (the bottle was empty) but when he took the guy to the morgue, he sat up. The codeine had slowed his breathing and heart rate so much that he didn't drown. I've heard of something like that happening in reality too. People sometimes just don't die when they're expected to.

First I am sure there are anecdotes as you claim...just as there are anecdotes about people seeing bigfoot, aliens, sea monsters, etc.

But yes people in near death experiences often experience hallucinations. Some see golf courses, some see loved ones, some see 'hell', some Jesus, some Buddha, etc. It really is very much like dream, what the person claims to see differes from one person to another. But it is no more 'evidence' than someone having a random dream.

BTW being 'pronounced dead by an EMT' is NOT dead. It means for a brief time the EMT cannot detect cardiorespitory activity. You want to impress me? Convince me the dead come back? Embalm someone then have them get back up...

No, this would not persuade me. How many times has a dying person been prayed for and was not miraculously cured? A better question would be this one: If your arm was chopped off and a stranger prayed the word "jesus" and a new arm immediately sprouted from the bleeding absence of the old one then, yes I would have to rethink my athiesm. The problem of course is that prayer never does anything that could not be reasonably doubted by a thinking person.

I had a friend with an NDE. He said he left his body and an angel met him. Floating above the operating room, watching the doctors operate, the angel told him it wasn't his time. Then, the angel offered him a plate of calamari. He said it was the best calamari he'd ever eaten. When he asked why he was being sent back, the angel told him he has yet to achieve his life's purpose. When he asked what the purpose was, the angel told him it was to make the world's first mustard-flavored firecracker.

True story.

EDIT:

"Look up the book "90 minutes in Heaven." Written by a man pronounced dead for 90 minutes."

Well, not really as EMTs cannot pronounce anyone dead. But what's a little stretching of the truth between friends? Rather they failed to locate a pulse (which doesn't necessarily mean there was not one) and moved on to help other people.

And being mistaken for dead is not that uncommon a thing AT ALL (scarily enough).

Here's a case of a man being declared legally dead, put into a body bag, and sent to a morgue, only to be discovered to be alive more than 2 1/2 HOURS later:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/12/28/national...

Here's a story of a woman in Boston who spent 3 1/2 HOURS in a body bag before she was found to be alive by a funeral director after an EMT and several police officers mistook her for dead:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=94291&page=1

"Police officers and emergency medical technicians were unable to detect any signs of life. Police concluded she was an apparent suicide victim and her body was taken to Matarese's funeral home."

Here's one from Venezuela where the autopsy had actually begun before they realized the "dead man" was actually alive:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN14997582007091...

"The medical examiner in Caracas, Venezuela faced an odd request this week when the man they were cutting began to bleed — an indication that he was very much alive. Carlos Camejo, 33, was declared dead after a highway accident and taken to the morgue. They were wrong. Camejo woke in the in middle of the examination in excruciating pain."

A similar thing happened in NYC lest you think that was just a developing world thing.

In Paraguay, a baby was declared dead and at its own wake before it was found to be alive:

http://guanabee.com/2009/08/dead-baby-wakes-up-bef...

"Sotelo said he attempted to revive the baby for an hour before pronouncing him dead. The pulse was so low that it was undetectable."

A similar event happened in Israel:

http://www.haaretz.com/news/baby-almost-buried-ali...

"A baby was almost buried alive on Thursday after a hospital near Tel Aviv mistakenly pronounced it dead.

The father of the child arrived at the Assaf Harofeh Hospital in Tzrifin to collect what he thought to be the baby's remains and received a certificate of death from the hospital.

While driving to a funeral home, the father noticed the box containing the child's remains moving and was amazed to discover that the baby was still alive inside. He then rushed the baby back to the hospital where it was admitted in a stable condition."

There are cases like this in the US, too.

I can give you a dozen more examples with ease.

Point is, besides making up a story about pearly gates to sell some books, the concept of people being declared dead accidentally only to be found alive HOURS (in some cases DAYS) later is not all that rare a thing.

Don't mistake confirmation bias and wishful thinking for actual evidence.

People who believe jesus talked to them as they were dying, it is proved that a dying brain hallucinates and just like a dream, will feel real when the person is revived.

Being revived from near death happens to animals and people and isn't something unusual. Reviving after being dead for longer than a certain cut-off time does NOT happen. After a certain time without oxygen, the brain dies completely and cannot be revived.

Also, what you hallucinate is what your brain produces. If you believe in jesus, you'll hallucinate jesus. If you believe in shiva, you'll hallucinate shiva. It comes from our own mind and is the origin for many religious beliefs.

A story. Even if I believe what I see and I believe my wife, that proves only that someone likely prayed for her. Her recovery is in no way linked causally to prayer. Your anecdotal "evidence" falls flat. Actual scientific study in this arena has clearly shown prayer to have no more efficacy than not praying... though rational sorts could have told you that anyway.

Edit: You still provide no proof, and offer a new piece of anecdotal evidence instead. Did you even visit the link I posted? And do you really know what it means to be closed-minded? I think not.