NEWS/MEDIA: Here’s a link to a significant issue raised by Jenny McCartney in the Daily Telegraph about near death experiences, and asking why people are so terrified of talking about them and related spiritual experiences. Unfortunately the 700 mostly outraged and hostile comments under the article show all too clearly the reason for the reluctance to speak up. We still have a long way to go to correct some civilisational “errors”. BTW I have met NDE researcher Peter Fenwick, whom she talks about (a FB friend). Besides being a very bright Cambridge academic, he’s a very nice fellow indeed. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/jennymccartney/9606158/Lets-not-be-shy-about-the-afterlife.html
With thanks to Simon Buckland for sending me the link. http://simonbuc-theblogoflove.blogspot.com
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3 thoughts on “Why are people too scared to talk about NDEs?”
Actually not all the comments are hostile; some are simply loopy. But what’s interesting is that they mostly don’t even respond to the point the author is making – which isn’t “I believe in NDEs, why doesn’t everyone else?” but “Why don’t even we even talk about it?”
As you’ve commented elsewhere; there’s a kind of taboo in the English-speaking world at least against even discussing or investigating anything which steps outside the positivist/materialist orthodoxy. People like Peter Fenwick are the exception rather than the rule, and they’re rarely even mentioned in the mainstream media.
Yes, you are right, Simon. her point was tat we should be able to discuss the matter. It’s basically a worldview issue, not an issue of data or whether there is something here worth talking about – which there is.
I’m not going to comment on this on FB, becsuae I’m a closet aetheist. I let people believe whatever they want about my so-called faith becsuae it causes fewer fights, but even as a child, I never really believed in God. Instead, I feel like many before me that religion is used to manipulate people in order to have power over them. The reasons it works are 1. Fear, 2. Desperation, 3. Hope that this life isn’t it , and 4. Certain inexplicable things that occasionally happen. The last thing even I have experienced lots of coincidences surrounding dead people, for instance. But we are the ones who give meaning to those coincidences. Not god. Anyway this is just to say that I know it can be lonely being a non-faith person. But I’m with you. I honestly wish we weren’t celebrating Xmas. To me, it’s silly to celebrate a deity that I don’t believe in. But the husband and kids like Christmas, so there you go.