NNS, thousands, if not millions of people claim to have experienced these "deathly" occurrences. Many are completely rational and trustworthy people. I don't doubt that most do genuinely and sincerely believe their experience to be true. Having said that, its not proof that what they believe happened, in reality did happen. Are you familiar with the expression "deja vu" which all of us have experienced from time to time. That feeling that some event has previous occurred, and we are reliving that experience for a second time. Deja vu is for an instant believed by us to be true, when the reality is soon realized that the mind is the culprit, and not some mystical unseen controlling force fooling around with place and time.

All this mystic nonsense appeals to the religious among us, as they search for proof that there is some truth to their rather questionable faith.

I myself have had an out of body experience during high temperature as a 12 year old child looking down on my body lying on the bed. However I do not believe there is a continuation of consciousness of the individual after death. What is the hope lies in the continuation of the spirit of the person as lived in the new generation we give birth too. I do not believe in the reclamation of the cells of the body we lived in during our life. The New Testament talks about new bodies 2 Corinthians 5 in which the character of Christ is evident. We are talking about the continuation of character not about our present mortal bodies.

From the website: http://atheistfoundation.org.au/article/life-after-death/. Each "fact" has its own wording on the website, but I will put my thoughts, "facts", feelings etc. here.

Fact one: Every creature is “programmed” to die in the name of evolutionary adaptation. That is the naked truth.

Who decided on that?

Fact two: We have a strong yearning for immortality.

A strong yearning for immortality? I don't think about it much at all. That element is assuming a lot of people may want a strong yearning for immortality that many in the community actually don't have.

Fact three: Humans will do almost anything for the perceived reward of “eternal life”.

What jump off a cliff? Swim with sharks? Where is the line drawn?

Fact four: Religions do not represent any kind of objective truth and therefore their “supernatural” element cannot be trusted to be at all factual.

Some things that are considered "natural" still haven't been fully proven in terms of how they operate, so that could be seen as unfair.

Fact five: There is no concrete evidence or even an inkling of a suggestion of evidence that we live after we die.

Yes, that could be fair, depending on what type of living one is referring to.

Fact six: After-life thoughts are just thoughts.

Yes, that could be fair, but I could apply that to a lot of other thoughts as well.

I have known a few oldies nearing the end, & far from any yearning for “eternal life”, every one was whishing it would be over soon.

With the level of pain some of us on here appear to be living with, that may go for more than a few of us.

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Dear NathanJ,

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You ask :

« Is there life after death? »

From a purely biological point of view, yes there is. Birth is not the beginning of life and death is not its end.

Life is a self-sustaining process that began a long time ago. It shows no signs of ceasing despite all the wars and destruction and irreversible damage caused by mankind to the eco-system. Birth is not the beginning of life. It is its continuance. Living cells are constantly renewed, some more frequently than others. Life is relayed by the individual members of each species, in exclusivity, to the next generation of the same species.

On the other side of the coin, death is the permanent cessation of the vital functions of a living organism or cell, due to either natural or accidental causes. It affects each and every member of the species individually or, in some exceptional circumstances, collectively. When all the members of a species are affected by death, the species is said to be extinct.

Our problem, our unease, or “existential dilemma”, is the insupportable thought that nothing eternal exists. Many of us cling desperately to the belief that there must be an afterlife for each individual and that “by faith alone we will be saved”. Faith may or may not get us to “heaven”, but, at least, it alleviates our “existential dilemma”.

Irrespective of whether we suffer from “existential dilemma” or not, the fact remains that as we can see neither a beginning nor an end to the cosmos and everything it contains, I, personally, consider that the eternal does, indeed, exist - until proof to the contrary.

I am less affirmative about life. But there is no doubt in my mind that, even if life is not eternal, love is.

I consider that either love is or it is not, and if it is not, then it never was. In my mind, there is no such thing as temporary or partial love. Either it is total, eternal and indestructible or it is not, and never was.

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(Continued ...)

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The biological anthropologist, Helen Fisher, suggested that " Love may be understood as part of the survival instinct, a function to keep human beings together against menaces and to facilitate the continuation of the species".

I, personally, like the definition of that well-known Australian biologist, Jeremy Griffith: "unconditional selflessness" – to which I should add Aristotle's definition : "to will the good of another".

Thus defined, love is a purely altruistic phenomenon, aimed at resulting in a concrete benefit to another individual rather than oneself. Nevertheless, the loss of a “loved one” can have a profound effect on some individuals – to such an extent that they do not survive the loss.

That, too, is, undeniably, a manifestation of love.

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