Life After Death - Mediums, Ghosts, Heaven or Nothing?

There used to be a religious programme called Credo on Sunday afternoons that one week had life after death as a topic. The programme interviewed a lorry driver who had been seriously injured in a crash and was unconscious for several hours in hospital. He said that he could feel himself rising above the hospital bed and then was told it wasn't his time yet and then came round. Possibly it could have been the medication, but it was interesting to hear his story.

Son died aged 33.came and told me he was in heaven and gran and grandad were with him

My childhood home is still my parents home is almost 300years old. We dealt with many different entities in the house one that my parents actually came to introduce us to as babies when we came home from the hospital.

I know, Witzend, and such anecdotes fascinate me, and I read all the these posts with a lot of interest.

Howeevr I still think scientific/ psychological investigation is prudent. Is the Koestler Institute still functioning?

Incidentally I don't believe death is 'the end'.

Caleo

A ghost is not a thing like us and other living beings that breathes and eats. So is a ghost a hallucination? Sometimes a hallucination where several persons see or hear the same thing?

The appearance of a recently deceased friend or relative is known to be a therapeutic response to the grief of mourning.

That’s as maybe, but I’ve heard of cases where someone has seen what they assumed was the person, before knowing that they’d died. So no grief or mourning yet involved at all.

There is a reasonable way to believe that death is not the end, although the phrase "life after death "is misleading'. Souls (selves) do not survive death as individuals.

The sense of self comes from the living brain.

A ghost is not a thing like us and other living beings that breathes and eats. So is a ghost a hallucination? Sometimes a hallucination where several persons see or hear the same thing?

The appearance of a recently deceased friend or relative is known to be a therapeutic response to the grief of mourning.

Yes, I read the article on weird Wiltshire Margells, but the first picture of the cottage is different to the next two pictures though?? looking like different cottages, unless part of the original was knocked down??

Miss Interpreted:

"Well, this thread has been well and truly hijacked, has it not?"

Sorry about that, Miss I.!

The point I should have made is that if you believe in Biblical miracles you are likely also to believe in non religious paranormal events such as ghosts and
magically foretelling the future.

Perhaps she is.
Mother Nature, and all that jazz.

I believe that organised religion is a social and divisive construct that benefits men and maintains the patriarchal world order. Now if God was a woman and all world religions were run by women, I wonder how different things would be.

MissInterpreted

Well, this thread has been well and truly hijacked, has it not?

Just a bit!!

oops. …wife had died unexpectedly in it shortly before he decided to sell. Dd and Sil knew this but it didn’t put them off - the house had a lovely warm atmosphere - you could tell it been a happy family home - they’d had 3 children.

When Gdd1 and Gds were about 8 or 9 months, and had just learned to wave, dd saw both of them waving and smiling at someone who wasn’t there. Same place both times, in the landing near the bathroom, with no mirror or any other reflective surface anywhere within eyeshot.
AFAIK it never happened with Gdd2, a few years younger than the other 2 who were born only 15 months apart,

DD’s house had been owned by a man whose

Haha love it MiniMoon

Indeed it has.
Driving home from nursery school with 2 year old granddaughter in the back, we passed by a local pub. Small voice from the back seat said, "we should put on our makeups and jewels and go to the plub." DD remarked that in a previous life granddaughter must have been a lady that lunches.
Same grandchild at a local agricultural show wanted a drink. When given a plastic glass of juice, she tapped it and with a look of disdain said, "this is not crystal."

It sure has!
The religious ruminations would be better on another thread.

Well, this thread has been well and truly hijacked, has it not?

If anyone would like more understanding of the Bible message about how to be right with God, I can recommend the free online 321 course.
speaklife.org.uk/321course/

Alpha courses are often good too.
alpha.org.uk/try-alpha

Caleo

Skye , I think we will have to agree to differ. It is sufficient to accept the moral code as explained by Jesus of Nazareth without also believing in miracles.

According to the Bible, that’s not sufficient when it comes to standing before God after we die. Everyone is ‘destined to die once, and after that to face judgement’ (Hebrews 9.27).

Everyone has broken the moral law of God in some way (sinned), e g lied, taken things that do not belong to us, however small, misused the name of God. ‘There is no one righteous, not even one’ (Romans 3.10). So everyone deserves judgement for sin. That means separation from God (Isaiah 59.2) for eternity.

What is sufficient, according to the Bible, is to believe its message before we die – that Jesus has paid the penalty for sin, when he died on the cross, for everyone who will trust and follow him – and to turn from sin and turn to God, to trust and obey Jesus.

Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many…
Hebrews 9.27-28

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
- Romans 10.9

So according to the Bible, to be saved from the judgement of God, and to be with him in heaven, someone does need to believe in its message, including that Jesus was raised from the dead, which is certainly a miracle.

This message of how to be saved is the whole point of the Bible.

Yes, we will agree to differ, on that and other things.

Skye , I think we will have to agree to differ. It is sufficient to accept the moral code as explained by Jesus of Nazareth without also believing in miracles.

Caleo

Skye wote:

"As God is spirit, it’s obvious that ‘Son of God’ isn’t referring to a biological relationship. Jesus was saying that he is God as well as man. He is the same kind of being as God the Father as well as the same kind of being as other human beings. He has a dual nature, both God and man."

This is a doctrine that was decided at the council of Nicea about three hundred years after Jesus died,

Jesus was son of the God of the Jewish religion .Jesus was a faithful Jew, and a progressive one. I am a daughter of the scientific enlightenment and I want the teachings of Jesus to be taught for post enlightenment people.

Where this connects with the dangers of beliefs in ghosts and such is that spirits are described as if they were separable from physical bodies. This is not the case, there are no separable spirits , and churches are right to modernise certain doctrines . It's also true that people in Palestine at the time of Jesus were as natural and real as are people today.

Literal Biblical interpretation is superstition.

there are no separable spirits [separate from bodies]

How do you know? Jesus certainly thought there were. This is an assumption based on a naturalistic worldview (that physical things are all that exist).

churches are right to modernise certain doctrines

Which doctrines are you thinking of, and which denominations have modernised them?

Literal Biblical interpretation is superstition.

Well, no one interprets the Bible 100% literally. Some of it is poetry for a start. But if you mean taking the words of Jesus and the words of the New Testament at face value is superstition, that also is an assumption based on a naturalistic worldview.

There is a good intellectual case for believing that Jesus rose from the dead. Part of that case is the minimal facts arguments for the resurrection.

There are at least four historical facts which are well attested and are granted by almost all Ancient History or New Testament Studies scholars, even the sceptical ones: the death of Jesus by crucifixion, the empty tomb, the post-resurrection appearances, and the origin of the Christian faith. The best explanation for these minimal facts is that Jesus was raised bodily from the grave.
crossexamined.org/the-minimal-facts-of-the-resurrection/

There are videos on this on YouTube (search ‘minimal facts resurrection’).

If Jesus rose from the dead, as he predicted he would, that validates his claim to be God and every other statement he made.

Caleo

Skye wote:

"As God is spirit, it’s obvious that ‘Son of God’ isn’t referring to a biological relationship. Jesus was saying that he is God as well as man. He is the same kind of being as God the Father as well as the same kind of being as other human beings. He has a dual nature, both God and man."

This is a doctrine that was decided at the council of Nicea about three hundred years after Jesus died,

Jesus was son of the God of the Jewish religion .Jesus was a faithful Jew, and a progressive one. I am a daughter of the scientific enlightenment and I want the teachings of Jesus to be taught for post enlightenment people.

Where this connects with the dangers of beliefs in ghosts and such is that spirits are described as if they were separable from physical bodies. This is not the case, there are no separable spirits , and churches are right to modernise certain doctrines . It's also true that people in Palestine at the time of Jesus were as natural and real as are people today.

Literal Biblical interpretation is superstition.

I am a daughter of the scientific enlightenment and I want the teachings of Jesus to be taught for post enlightenment people.

It is no coincidence that the scientific enlightenment grew up in Christian societies. As Professor John Lennox says,

‘Men became scientific because they expected law in nature and they expected law in nature because they believed in a lawgiver.’
- John C. Lennox, God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?

When the universe seemed unpredictable and at the mercy of the whims of the gods, there did not seem much point in looking for patterns and regularities in nature and writing equations to describe them.

Many great scientists, such as Isaac Newton, William Kelvin, Michael Faraday, James Clark Maxwell, John Polkinghorne and Francis Collins, have had no trouble in accepting all the content of the teachings of Jesus, both natural and supernatural. (Isaac Newton spent quite a lot of time writing about the book of Daniel.)

In the life and teachings of Jesus, the natural and the supernatural are inextricably entwined. To have teachings of Jesus without reference to miracles, angels, demons, heaven and hell, you would have to throw away most of the four gospels.

Chucking out the majority of his teachings isn’t really respecting Jesus in my view.

Caleo

Skye wote:

"As God is spirit, it’s obvious that ‘Son of God’ isn’t referring to a biological relationship. Jesus was saying that he is God as well as man. He is the same kind of being as God the Father as well as the same kind of being as other human beings. He has a dual nature, both God and man."

This is a doctrine that was decided at the council of Nicea about three hundred years after Jesus died,

Jesus was son of the God of the Jewish religion .Jesus was a faithful Jew, and a progressive one. I am a daughter of the scientific enlightenment and I want the teachings of Jesus to be taught for post enlightenment people.

Where this connects with the dangers of beliefs in ghosts and such is that spirits are described as if they were separable from physical bodies. This is not the case, there are no separable spirits , and churches are right to modernise certain doctrines . It's also true that people in Palestine at the time of Jesus were as natural and real as are people today.

Literal Biblical interpretation is superstition.

This is a doctrine that was decided at the council of Nicea about three hundred years after Jesus died

The idea that Jesus is God was not invented at the Council of Nicea, but goes back to the early days of Christianity.

‘In his book Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code, agnostic historian Bart Ehrman writes,

“Constantine did call the Council of Nicea, and one of the issues involved Jesus’divinity. But this was not a council that met to decide whether or not Jesus was divine... Quite the contrary: everyone at the Council—in fact, just about every Christian everywhere—already agreed that Jesus was divine, the Son of God.

The question being debated was how to understand Jesus’divinity in light of the circumstance that he was also human. Moreover, how could both Jesus and God be God if there is only one God? Those were the issues that were addressed at Nicea, not whether or not Jesus was divine. And there certainly was no vote to determine Jesus’divinity: this was already a matter of common knowledge among Christians, and had been from the early years of the religion. [Emphasis added.]”

…The New Testament is full of references to the deity of Christ…the earliest church fathers [leaders] explicitly affirmed the deity of Christ.’
www.str.org/w/did-the-council-of-nicea-invent-the-deity-of-christ-

Jesus was son of the God of the Jewish religion

Yes, the God who gave this Old Testament prophecy about the Messiah who was to come:

For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given…

And he will be called

Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father …
- Isaiah 9.6

Caleo

Skye, you certainly know the Scrptures better than me!

Your quite from Daniel is interesting, as "son of man " means what I take it to mean, that Jesus was a man.

As a Christian you probably believe in miracles when God intervenes in this world of time, and sorrow.

I prefer to seek probable explanations before I believe in direct interventions from God. don't believe in that sort of God. Same with me and ghosts and other paranormal events: I seek natural explanations before I believe ghost stories.

Thank you! I’ve been studying them for a while now.

Yes, Jesus was a man, but not just a man. The son of man in Daniel 7 is both a man and a divine being who has sovereign power, is worshipped by all nations, and has everlasting dominion.

I am naturally sceptical and always look for natural explanations before turning to supernatural ones. That does not mean that there are no supernatural explanations. As Craig Keener has shown (see my comment on 14/03/2024 at 19:45), there is good evidence for the existence of miracles.

I like to go where the evidence leads. That’s how I became a Christian in my 30s.