A Guy Dies And Experiences Both Hell and Heaven -- Real Thought-Provoking Testimony

Mountain_Fire77

The story of Ian McCormack
Ian McCormack lives in New Zealand. He died in hospital in Mauritius at a young age following poisonous stings from box jelly fish. He was dead for 15 minutes. He experienced both Hell and Heaven.

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?...71460463354645

TheBlackCat

Any evidence any of this was anything other than hallucinations created by a oxygen-starved brain doped up on neurotoxins?

Sandok

Of course, the word of some man who almost died! Honnestly though, if I can't see it, touch it, experience it or understand it, couldn't care less.

TheBlackCat

I don't have to be able to "can't see it, touch it, experience it or understand it". There are many things that are true but cannot be seen or touched and are beyond my understanding. Atoms, black holes, the big bang. These are things that are known to be true to the extent that anything can be known to be true, but that I don't understand fully and are certainly beyond our ability to see, touch, or experience. The difference is that they exist in the outside world, they are backed up by extremely strong evidence, and we can test predictions that would be true if they were correct. That is how science works. Evidence is needed. At the very least you have to show what you are describing actually happened and wasn't just a hallucination or even made-up.

This, on the other hand, exists only in this guy's head. There is nothing in the outside world to corroborate it. There is no prediction it makes that we can test. These sorts of hallucinations are known to be made in brains that is starved for oxygen, and having neurotoxins interfering with normal brain function could only exacerbate that (although I am not sure that box jelly toxins can penetrate the blood-brain barrier they would still interfere with the peripheral nervous system which would then be passed on to the brain.) For all we know it could be true, but there is not the slightest bit of evidence that it is true and can just as easily be described by perfectly natural, well-known phenomenon.

BlueMak

This is bullshit. Even if heaven and hell exist (I don't think believe they do), he is lying his ass off. The whole production is nothing but staged rehearse brain washing to capture the minds of some people. He is talking like a salesman, the whole thing is so fake that it is funny. He is following clear rules while he is doing his speech.

SFOSOK

He did not almost die, he did die.

Sandok

... ressucitation is nothing unheard of...

The atom and black holes and bigbang fall under "understand"

nitrousoxide52

He died in the "old" sense of the term, the new definition of death is when all brain activity ceases.

Mountain_Fire77

I am no doctor or med student but i thought that when a persons heart stops beating that is when the person is classed as deceased? I might be wrong but if any brain injury occurred the brain could shut down, but the deciding factor would be when the heart stops beating?

I might be wrong but i thought a person could be brain dead in effect yet still be alive if the heart beats??

nitrousoxide52

Your heart won't beat if your brain is dead...

TheBlackCat

Pretty much. It can cease temporarily under some conditions, such as with some drugs, buit when it ceases permanently you are considered dead. Heart beat is not used anymore because it is quite possible to have someone's heart stop beating for a prolonged period of time and then be revived. Similarly, the heart can continue beating even without the brain. In fact isolated individual cardiac muscle cells will continue to beat if put in a petri dish with the right chemical environment. The brain only regulated heart rate, increasing it or decreasing it. If left to its own devices the heart will beat on its own. If your brain ceases functioning permanently, though, you are never coming back. So that definition is used to determine actual death. The problem, of course, is that someone can have higher brain (cortical) death, meaning everything that was that person, their memories, personality, emotions, and thoughts, are gone forever, and yet this person can still be legally "alive". So there are specific laws that dictate what can happen in that situation. I personally think death should be considered neocortical death, but so far that is not the case in any place I am aware of.

Maddogg6

If hes found peace and happiness in crediting his experience to some 'greater power' instead of being lucky - or giving credit to the human body for its amazing abilities... well, thats his choice I will respect, but I do think its counter productive for medicine/science - something thats credited and proven more frequently to be effective in 'saving' people.

Frankly I dont think people give themselves enough credit - seems many people find it eaier to praise others than themselves - but we are conditioned to not be 'egotistical' or even boastful and society very much promotes praising others, especially 'god'.

My best guess is his brain went into 'survival' mode and gave him what he needed to help in his survival (read: chemical reactions in the brain to cause physiolocial reactions to reduce effects of the venom and manage pain - aka 'will to survive'). Something science/medicine have been proving happens naturally in the human body more and more but still not completely understood - none the less, there IS more evidence leading in this direction than to a 'greater powers' interventions.

What happens in the after life will never be proven (in our life time anyway) and always argued (as it has for centuries). To me its senseless to get emotional over things we cant prove beyond reasonable doubt. Thus, it may as well be another Harry Potter story. Only Harry potter is presented a bit more professionally and as entertainment not 'fact'.

Spirituality is best left 'personal' and to push any belief systems thru sensational story alone is by definition, 'manipulation', as the 'sensational' parts distract from the fact no evidence is available for scrutiny to support their 'strory'. (other than he was stung by a box jelly fish - something other people have lived thru as well). So, stories like this, to me, are obvious attempts at gaining perishiners by adding the 'heaven and hell' and 'eternity' references and not focusing on the more likely and more provable physioligcal aspects of his experience.

Dont mis-understand my words of opposition - its NOT against 'spirituality' - its against 'orginized religion' - and this guy was obviously 'preaching' in a house of orginized religion - er.. god.

Bottom line - this guy is more proving what the human body is capable of - and little else.

Mountain_Fire77

Good answer but can i ask this question to you : If the very exact same thing happened to you what happened to this chap would you deny all the spiritual aspects of the experience you went through and account it all to chemicals acting in your dying brain or would you give it serious consideration and the serious implications that it would have on your life if you were to believe what your feelings, emotions, brain, eyes etc saw heard and felt?

Would you accept that you totally had a severe illusion or would you believe what you saw, heard, felt when you are even presented with the fact afterwards that you were dead for 15 minutes. (according to the chap in question)

It would be pretty convincing to me that it was a true experience, but everyone will react to a experience differently to the next person

Sandok

I personally wouldn't believe what my brain would experience in my last moments... I mean, depending on whether or not you are already christian or muslim or something, you'll typically be thinking of that in your last seconds (what will happen now that I die sorta question) and that preforced thinking will make your final seconds of "reasonable" thinking something extraordinary.

I find the entire thing just really silly since people under extreme subtances and drugs can experience and say the same junk. Just the fact that he was out of it for 15 minutes makes his story more creditable than others?

TheBlackCat

I am completely confident that I would account for it the way I have already described. I know what can cause these sorts of experiences so if I am in a situation that can cause them and they do, in fact, occur I don't think I will have any problem accepting that my brain works the same as everyone else's'.

SFOSOK

He was legally dead.

If your heart stops for 15 minutes, you are dead. In any sense. There is no "new sense" of how someone is dead because it has not changed.

Oxygen has been cut off from his brain for 15 minutes and he came back to life. Not because someone tried for 15 minutes to bring him back but for a reason unknown to me.

Usually doctors stop trying to bring someone back after 2-3 minutes, so what brought him back is beyond me.

Edit: I am amazed at how blind some of you are. Living in an absolute that you are not wrong when it comes to religion, spirituality, and belief. Shooting down anything that challanges the way you think and believe.

I would say I pity you but I do not.

Mountain_Fire77

Can i just ask a simple question once again.

Is there any way in what you could accept that what this chap experienced could of been true and there is a spiritual realm? I ask this because just say for instance (although not necessarily true) that there was more overwhelming evidence for these spiritual experiences being true rather than the mind playing tricks on us, would you still hold to the unshakable fact that its false or would there be room for a open-minded debate on the subject.

If I'm rambling i apologize, haven't had much sleep these past few days and been staring at a screen non-stop almost

Maddogg6

Well, I can only speculate but I think not.
If god is credited for the 'surviving'- then he gets the blame for dead too, and all that stuff is 'illogical' when way more evidence is pointing that we live in a very logical world. 'lack of understanding' <> 'lack of logic'


Have you ever experienced a chemical induced hallucination.. I have and they *seem* VERY real. So I do have 1st hand knowledge of how chemicals and the brain are capable of 'tricking' our conscience mind. It wasnt god - but peyote.

Ok, but to jump to assumption with no evidence is not only counter productive - but dangerous. I mean, if you get sick. do you seek god or a doctor? Me - I goto a doctor.

Lets do an experiment.
We intentionally sting you with a box jelly fish...
Do you ask for qualified medical personel or a priest (or some indication god is paying attention) to be on site to treat/revive you?

Medicine has a longer track record of 'reviving' people than what 'god' has.
Medicine also explains how hallucination happen and why. But I never heard gods explanation of this 'phenomenon' - not from the horses mouth anyway - only confilicting versions by his most loyal followers.

But if hes here to tell the tale - hes NOT dead. is he? - or is that a 'holy spirit' on youtube?
So - it seems we need to re-define when someone is 'clinically dead'. Thats all. Now I wonder how many people *could* have been revived - but were given up on becuse of this 'definition' we adhere to.

Maddogg6

Blind - as in 'blind obediance' ??? accepting things on others words and no evidence? Whos blind? All I ask for is evidence to back up a story - w/o evidence thats all it is - a story.

Not looking for any pitty personally.

Maddogg6

The burden of proof is on those making the assertions, not on those asking for proof. Simply - prove it and I will believe. Its pretty simple actually.

Dowaco

God, Heaven and Hell are all unprovable ideas. People who are trained to think scientifically cannot accept the existence of spritual things logically because there is no way to prove even the smallest concept. No one can even devise an experiment that would test the premise.

One must make the decision to believe or not to believe based on faith or lack of it. And faith has nothing to do with logical thought. So you either believe in God despite the lack of provability or do not believe because of it.

I also think that what someone else believes is their business and not for me to ridicule. But at the same time not for them to force upon me.

TheBlackCat

You are asking two different questions here. What he experienced could very well be all in his mind yet there is still a "spiritual realm" (I assume you mean Heaven and Hell and not some sort of "atral plane"). And the answer is yes, if sufficient evidence that matches supernatural explanations better than natural ones then I would be happy to accept the supernatural. As of yet no such evidence has appeared, despite extensive searching over a very long time.

Once again, you are discussing two entirely different issues here. First, I do not "hold to the unshakable fact that its false" nor did I ever claim what he experienced was a hallucination. I said that everything he experienced could easily be explained by well-known mental processes without the need to resort to the supernatural. That does not mean that a supernatural explanation was not the correct one. But there are two explanations we are discussing here. One explanation requires nothing other than what we already know to be true. The other requires assuming the existence of an omnipotent deity, and it assumes that this deity is in the habit of grabbing people who are almost but not quite dead and showing them completely different and mutually exclusive visions of heaven and hell that just happen to match their preconceptions and happen to perfectly match what you would expect from hallucinations induced by a dieing brain. Now that by no means proves that the second explanation is wrong, but logic dictates that we must accept the explanation that requires the least unfounded assumptions.

Second, if there was any evidence whatsoever to support this sort of thing I would be happy to discuss it. I have a perfectly open mind regarding these sorts of things, or at least as open as a human mind can be (which is frankly not very). But in the end I go where the evidence points. As it is, there is no evidence that cannot be explained just as well, if not better, by perfectly natural occurrences without having to include the supernatural. So until there is some evidence for supernatural occurrences here on Earth logic dictates I must operate as though they do not occur. I will change in a heartbeat (no pun intended) should sufficient evidence present itself, but as of yet it has not so I don't.

No, he wasn't. And yes, the definition of "dead" has changed. The world progresses. As medicine has advanced conditions that were previously terminal have become curable. Therefor, definitions of what constitutes death have changed, both medically and legally. That is simply how things are.

Note the "irreversible" part. Thi