The Death of Atheism

As reports of a peaceful and joyful afterlife keep coming in, we’ll start to see the fallout; how some ideas that were considered to be beyond question just a few years ago will come to be reconsidered and then rejected. One casualty of the reality of near death experiences will be atheism. Atheism is the absence of a belief in God. Atheists believe in the physical reality of our existence in this world and reject the idea of an afterlife.

Many self-proclaimed atheists have now had what we call a near death experience, and have come back with a radically altered view of what’s real and what’s not.  A woman named Janice Blouse, whose heart stopped at age twenty-eight when she vomited large amounts of blood from multiple stomach ulcers said afterward:  “I was always a professed atheist, but after my experience I know there is God. He was waiting at the end of the tunnel, and somehow I know this. I felt a peace and tranquility I had never known. I find it very reassuring now, because I know our spirit does outlive our body, and that dying is a very pleasant experience.” A woman named Tanya, who stopped breathing when she bled out after a hysterectomy when she was forty-one, said the following upon her return: “I know now there is a God and He deals with each one of us personally. If this is what I had to go through to come to the faith I have, I thank Him. I can never be the same person I was before this experience.” (After, p.158)

And then there’s the story of Nancy Rynes. Nancy decided she was an atheist at age 16. She became a scientist, a biologist, and was totally confirmed in her atheism at the age of 46 when she had a bicycle accident and a near-death experience. She left her body and saw rolling countryside and felt a sense of peace and unconditional love. And she thought to herself: “If I died, what’s all this? Because, first of all, I don’t believe in anything. Second of all, my parents told me I was going to hell because I was an atheist now. And then she says: “The answer came kind of from all around me, and the answer was: ‘This is your home. You are a part of me. You are a part of us. Welcome back.’ And then she says: “I knew immediately. Oh my God. That life I had on earth was just an illusion, a temporary state. It was just so obvious”

The same kind of thing has been happening to atheists from other religions. Take the case of a Syrian man named Rahmaan, who had a hard fall against a curb and went into shock.  He left his body and then had a very distressing experience at first, before reaching out for help. Then he says: “Suddenly, I remembered God. But I didn't believe in God and was very stubborn about my non-belief. I had my own scientific reasons for denying God's existence. How could I ask Him for help when I was certain that He does not exist?”

But then he does reach out and he comes to an all-encompassing light. As he describes it: “This light was so majestic that the first I saw Him, I felt so small in his presence. I felt that His nature is higher than me. I felt that He loves me with all His existence and now I was falling in love with Him too. The Light asked me if I fear Him. I replied, 'No, not at all. You are so beautiful! But I don't know who are you!' In the end, he is profoundly changed by this experience and concludes: “The Light gave me the understanding that humans are a small part of God. Through challenges put on part of His soul (meaning human souls which belong to Him), God will get stronger. This was the understanding and feeling that I got.”

There are some atheists who have had near death experiences who steadfastly hold on to their atheism. They’ll say that yes, they left their bodies and experienced a heavenly light filled with love, but that they didn’t actually see God. Just a heavenly light, all-encompassing unconditional love and intelligence. Many other non-atheists express similar views of the existence of God. Bev Brodsky, a young woman from Los Angeles, not an atheist, but with little interest in religion at the time, was involved in a motorcycle crash, had a near-death experience, and had the following to say: “There before me was the living presence of the light,” she observes. “ Within it I sensed an all-pervading intelligence, wisdom, compassion, love and truth. There was neither form nor sex to this perfect being. It, which I shall in future call He, in keeping with our commonly accepted syntax, contained everything, as white light contains all the colours of a rainbow, when penetrating a prism.”  

But then, what’s in a name? Whatever name is used, the former atheists described here find the divine, or simply an ‘all-pervading intelligence, wisdom, compassion, love and truth,' and recognize that they are spiritual beings whose earthly physical existence, that they thought was the only reality, is but a temporary stage in their ongoing spiritual development.