this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2026
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Near-death experiences and "coming back" from death, a rant (pawb.social)
submitted 1 week ago by chosensilence@pawb.social to c/atheism@lemmy.world
31 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

this is something that really bothers me. i'm wondering if others have the same annoyance:

whenever i hear about people who supposedly died and came back and reported seeing and experiencing an afterlife, all i can think about is how death is irreversible. quite literally nobody has ever died and then resurrected. reanimation hasn't been observed a single time throughout all of human history. what happened instead is they were actively dying and their brain was reacting to shutting down. "of course," you say reading this. but so many people accept the premise that this is remotely possible by not rejecting it immediately and that is the most frustrating part about all of this.

it confirms and demonstrates to me that humans are resistant to being fundamentally challenged even in the face of absolute certainty. most things in the universe are not absolutely known, but death is the rare, and perhaps only, exception. death is permanent in its natural occurrence. there is no 99.9% of the time, there aren't any other ways to be dead (literal death), every single living thing will die. period. ...unless humans figure something out.

so yeah it bugs me when people even entertain the idea that there's something worth discussing or listening to regarding claims of "coming back from death." like there are skeptics and people who are willing to listen to these assertions. ...why? there is, literally, no chance they are describing an existence after death. death can't be reversed. when a person appears clinically dead and then regains consciousness, guess what, they weren't dead regardless of medical technology saying they were lol. we just aren't able to detect the smallest indications of life.

/rant

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[–] CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Cool. I hope you understand I’m going to rely on the NIH’s definition of death more than some rando on Lemmy.

[–] Bristlecone@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

Dude you are still missing the basic philosophical premise of OP's post regardless of how you want to define "death". Also, I'm not sure if you're trolling or what's going on, but let me try to explain a thought I had prompted by this post also: For a religious person who claims to see God briefly after they "die" seems strange to me simply because their god would already know that they were going to be revived in mere seconds. Feels like these people think that they unlocked a hack or a way to cheat the system into seeing the afterlife, and obtaining evidence of god existence, in a way that goes around god's big plan or whatever. Almost seems sacrilegious to suggest if you are a believer, right?

[–] chosensilence@pawb.social 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

okay well i suggest you reread that article because it talks about limitations being able to detect death lol. it even mentions early that modern tech has reduced errors but not completely eliminated them.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Yes. And these are definitions and words. They get defined for various applications. I don't think there's a single "true" definition of "death", not by the NHS, nor by anyone else. Someone can be dead per law, someone can be dead enough but you'll still perform CPR on them. Or their head is missing and they're really dead and you don't do CPR. Other people still have vital signs and they're so dead the doctors will remove their liver, kidneys and heart and transplant it to somebody else... There's just several definitions of the word. So yes. Sure, per some definition people can be dead and then be resurrected. But that's just a definition thing, not a real concept. It's a bit weird to have non-permanent death, if you ask me. It's useful for certain things to phrase it like that. But how a word is being used doesn't tell us a lot here.

[–] chosensilence@pawb.social 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

biological death exists regardless of our medical and legal terms.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Does it, though? All I can find is descriptions like this one: "Biological death marks the definitive endpoint of an organism’s life, representing the irreversible cessation of all biological functions. This profound transition signifies a state where [...]"

Which leads me to believe it's a point in time. Not a "thing" that "exists". All I can see is how life exists. And we can't really talk just about the absence of life as per your initial post. Because we all transitioned from not being alive to living. That happens when we're born. I think what you were referring to is more an abstract process within a complex biological organism. And the specific effects on one particular organ. That of course exists. But even that is more of an abstract concept, made up of a plethora of real things happen.

[–] chosensilence@pawb.social 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

i apologize but i'm not following. a biological organism will eventually cease to exist regardless of our medical and legal terms or our abstract and subjective beliefs. we did transition from not being alive to being alive, but never being alive to not being alive. you can come into existence in a different way you go out and the processes can be different as well. non-existence isn't death. death is the process of transitioning from existence to non-existence.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

I think so as well. I guess I'm more reluctant to accept how people casually talk about "death" as if it was clear what that means. When reality it's many processes simultaneously in a complex organism. I don't think "near-death experience" is anything meaningful to begin with, since we're talking about a broad, abstract concept of dying. We'd need to talk specifics, like visual hallucinations on cell death in brain tissue. Or when it's deprived of oxygen. We can talk about if this vague process can be interrupted, but details really matter. And we can't confuse the process with the result. I think some people confuse these things.

[–] chosensilence@pawb.social 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

i completely understand. you make good points. a lot of people do confuse clinical and biological death and equate them or rather don't bother to separate. death isn't necessarily a precise moment but i would argue there has to be an exact point it becomes permanent. whatever that is and however it happens is the process referred to as death, and it is irreversible as we know it.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Yes. That's still vague, though. I think we're talking about brain death in specific. And a point where two things have happened. Firstly a system collapse within the cerebrum (or whatever that part of the brain is called), and enough cell damage so it's irrecoverable. At least that's what I think it is. I guess what I was trying to say before: These things are what actually happens in reality. "Brain death" is more the abstract concept describing these real things having happened.

I'm not a philosopher but I guess we have people confuse more things. Ultimately most people discuss these things to find some kind if afterlife which attributes meaning to life. But isn't that confusing meaning with existence? Biological processes do exist. I don't think they necessarily have a "meaning" though. They just happen. And it's not that easy to conclude meaning from things happening.

And then I'm not sure if we even have ways to tell. Other than hindsight. Even just the brain is very complex and made up of different subsystems. As far as I know only parts of it can be damaged, leaving someone in an permanent coma without any upper brain activity, yet the basic functions still make their heart etc work. I think it's fairly arbitrary if we call them dead or not dead, if we attribute the moment of death before or after their basic life signs cease as well. And there's the added difficulty we have limited ways to look inside. And does one more dead synapse mean they've transitioned state to being dead? Do a few hundred? I don't think there's answers to that, so we're stuck with a conservative definition of a concept.