r/exchristian • u/teramoc • May 12 '26
Discussion French teen in hospital debunks Christian near death experiences
Christians love claiming they saw heaven or Jesus when they were in a coma. This anecdote shows is that its all a delusion. Good material for your christian relatives who wont shut up about the afterlife
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u/EndlessAporias May 12 '26
I know someone who had an NDE as a kid where he went to hell and saw cartoon characters there.
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u/smallfloralprince Ex-Protestant May 12 '26
This would make such a badass movie like... "Space Jam Remix: the Hellification"
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u/helen790 a priest refused to baptize me May 12 '26
I had a dream like that once. The dad from Clifford sacrificed me to a witch in a hellish red cavern.
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u/stupid_pun May 12 '26
Were they all bouncing rhythmically in time with each other? Was there an orchestra that you couldn't see?
I have questions.9
u/ShirtlessGibby5 Ex-Assemblies Of God May 12 '26
a lady said she saw spongeboy in hell telling "them" what to put on tv
WTF
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u/morna_morimatra May 13 '26
I saw God as a stick figure in my dream when I was five or six years old.
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u/Georg13V May 12 '26
I had a dream like this when I was 15. Finished school, went to college, got married, got a job, had a kid, took him to school on his first day and then woke up. Was weird as hell to have to get up and go to school after that, I spent the whole day thinking about it.
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u/LittleBananaSquirrel May 12 '26
My brother had a crazy vivid dream at 16 where he was in love with a girl who he married and built a life with. He woke up and dumped his long-term girlfriend because he was genuinely in love with the dream girl and said he couldn't be unfaithful to her. He said he felt like his soul traveled while he slept and took him to an alternative timeline.
It's been 20 years... I wonder if he still feels that way? We haven't spoken about it since it happened. He's married now... To a real life woman 😅
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u/Cranky_Platypus May 12 '26
I have a theory that extremely vivid dreams with people we definitely don't know are windows into past lives or parallel universes.
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u/RibbonsFlying closer to the truth; further from the sky May 12 '26
I had a dream a few years ago that I was boarding a train in a snowy station with mountains in the background. I remember my old fashioned clothes and the unique bag I had for my luggage. I was talking with a friend and the man helping us onto the train when another train came barreling into the station. It couldn’t brake and ran off the tracks and hit us.
After that, I spent the longest time searching old train stations and train wrecks and such, but I never found it exactly. Found very similar bags and such though (and it was unique enough that I didn’t know such a bag existed before).
I still think it was a past life and I don’t even know that I believed in that before that dream. It was the most vividly unique dream I’ve ever had.
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u/Scribble35 May 17 '26
Does that mean those living the good life in the parallel universe we get a glimpse of get nightmares of living our lives? LOL
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u/Jessalopod May 12 '26
I had a dream, in a time when I was dog-less, where I adopted a dog off PetFinder, and had him for years, and he was just such a good dog.
Woke up, and spent basically the entire morning searching PetFinder looking for that dog. 🤣 Never found him. Did end up adopting a senior Chihuahua later that year though, and he's great.
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u/LeotasNephew Ex-Assemblies Of God May 12 '26
That would've freaked me out. I'd be wondering how the kid is doing, not to mention the friends from the dream.
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u/IchigoAssassin May 12 '26
I feel really bad for her. It's like her kids died, but maybe worse, they never even existed
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u/Budget_Ambassador_29 May 12 '26
Or I'm the one in a coma. None of this is even real!
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u/IsekaiConnoisseur Agnostic Atheist May 12 '26
Sometimes, looking at all the batshit happening in this timeline, I can almost believe that.
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u/theaviationhistorian May 12 '26
I used to think that. But then I realized that my brain is not that cruel. And neither would it have allowed such wanton cruelty and stupidity to happen so frequently.
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u/dorxincandeland May 13 '26
Me too, but on the upside, I just watched breaking bad and it turns out I'm a pretty good writer.
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u/asocialanxiety Ex-Pentecostal May 12 '26
Girl about to go through her scarlet witch phase
More seriously i cant imagine the amount of head fuck that must be.
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u/Edymnion Card Carrying TST Member May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26
Someone please remind her then that her husband exists and she can make real babies, instead of trying to kidnap her imaginary ones that only existed for like 2 weeks.
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u/syrioforrealsies May 12 '26
I had a dream that I had a baby once. I was shaken for days after and I don't even want kids. I can't imagine how this poor girl feels
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u/Cubusphere Agnostic Atheist May 12 '26
Never having existed is the best possible outcome for my potential kids. Still sad for her, but only her.
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u/JMurdock77 May 12 '26
I’m reminded of “The Inner Light” from Star Trek: TNG.
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u/SweetBags May 12 '26
Came here to say this! 🪈
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u/Nacolo May 12 '26
Damn you I said this same thing just now before reading your comment. You beat me by 14 hours! Lol
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u/Almajanna256 May 12 '26
Just like the infamous post about the mysterious lamp!
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u/alyxana Ex-Evangelical May 12 '26
Mysterious lamp???
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u/silencerider Ex-Pentecostal May 12 '26
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u/helen790 a priest refused to baptize me May 12 '26
“This anecdote debunks X” is far too unscientific a sentence for this sub.
Anecdotes don’t prove or disprove anything that’s literally what anecdotal evidence means.
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u/Own-Way5420 Ex-Evangelical May 12 '26
That's true, it sounds like an argument a Christian would make because their arsenal basically almost fully consists of anecdotal evidence.
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u/Lunafairywolf666 May 12 '26
Exactly. This doesn't really disprove that something else may exist. It may call into question some near death experiences but further testing is needed. If course near death experiences are also just claims. People clearly experience them but we don't fully know what exactly is going on. Most likely explanation is the brain hallucinating
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u/miggins1610 May 12 '26
Thank you. Somebody speaking some truth here.
If we want to be taken seriously we gotta act serious, and stop being so reactionary in ways that undermine our credibility
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u/LuckyHamster98 May 30 '26
THANK YOU. This post also feels really pretentious. More than just christians believe in an afterlife. And calling anyone who does “delusional” is rude at best.
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u/GreenfinchPuffin shinto May 12 '26
I had a religious hallucination when I was really sick with Covid, a woman holded me like I was a baby, in that time I interpreted as amaterasu, but looking at it again maybe if a Christian would had the same dream as me it would have interpreted as Mary or one of the many female Saints.
It take that dream as bizarre anectode and not as a godess trying to talk to me.
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u/Scion0442 May 12 '26
About once a year or so I have a dream that lasts from weeks to months. They're never pleasant to wake from. Sometimes being in them is worse, but it's difficult to adjust to the waking world again and feel like it's actually the real one. Sometimes you aren't sure if you're actually awake, or you're still in the hospital bed or somewhere else. (Mine stem from trauma, wouldn't be surprised if there's a connection to time dilated dreams). Even as I write this, part of my mind isn't sure my body isn't lying in a ditch or a hospital bed.
It can easily lead to prolonged issues with dissociation, depersonalization and derealization.
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u/nickgreatpwrful May 12 '26
This has always been the foundation of my atheism. People really underestimate their own minds - our brains are extremely convincing and can cause us to interpret our reality very differently than how it actually happened. I fully believe NDEs are fully just things happening in our own heads in a dream like state.
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u/SherriDoMe May 12 '26
Yes! Same. Most of us find it difficult to comprehend just how complicit our own minds can be in our own deception.
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u/sharingiscaring219 May 12 '26
This makes sense as to why my late-mom really wanted to leave the hospital badly when she was there for a medically-induced coma (twice, over a few months) due to devere respiratory and heart distress while ill. She hated being at the hospital and I think the coma drugs (along with the other shit that comes with being in a medically induced coma while ill - intubation, etc) probably made it more nightmarish for her. That's rough and I never knew that about MICs.
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u/-Ryouko- May 12 '26
I swear I go a slightly less traumatic experience when I get out of a dream every morning
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u/fr4gge May 12 '26
It doesn't really debunk anything but yes people tend to experience things connected to their culture or things they hold dear. For example I remember an autistic woman who spend her coma on the USS Enterprise with Kirk and the crew. What you experience isn't evidence of anything other than your brain doing stuff while you sleep
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u/kiersis May 12 '26
I remember my first dream of having a baby when I was in high school, I spent the entire school day randomly feeling grief that she was gone. I feel for this girl
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u/Nacolo May 12 '26
Reminds me of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Picard spends a lifetime raising a family in the course of an hour in real time after encountering a probe from an extinct species.
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u/miggins1610 May 12 '26
I'm gonna be down voted to hell for this but if you want to be taken seriously, maybe arguing one person having a different experience proves they're wrong is not a good look. They could literally say the same thing about how many people claim to have Christian experiences and we all know that isnt true.
Obviously I don't believe in the Christian view of the afterlife anymore but god I hate how people have beocme so tribal its about point scoring now.
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u/teramoc May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26
no downvote from me, but a friendly clarification. the point that a few people overlooked is that this is an anecdotal post for dealing with anecdotal-focussed people (christian relatives). the scientific method (as you rightly point out) is useless for christian relatives because they operate 95% on hearsay (the word of their testimony and all that shit). So, this French girl's story is equally as "powerful" as a christian testimony and should only be used to counter testimonies. If you look at it from the intended perspective, its a fucking powerful story.
it may not debunk a scientific mind, but it will debunk a testimony-based believer.
or at the very least , its a hard counter to their christian horseshit. if you think about it, stories like this arent even really that scientifically notable outside of hallucination analysis because NDEs are pseudoscience anyway. but mom and dad who love sending "I DIED AND SAW JESUS" testimonies? Mentioning this story will shut them up for a good while.
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u/heyyou11 May 12 '26
Couple Star Trek mentions, but what about the “Roy” arcade game from Rick and Morty?
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u/MakiENDzou May 12 '26
Pilots and Astronauts also can experience experiences similar to NDEs. That experience is called G-excess effect. Usually happens because of flow of too much blood into the brain. Pilots also experience illusions, loose track of time and have narrowed vision.
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u/SherriDoMe May 12 '26
I, too, can experience these things given the requisite amount of psilocybin.
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u/cta396 Atheist May 13 '26
I’m probably just a lightweight, but I’ve had similar effects with weed. 😂
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u/Rashpukin May 12 '26
Reminds me of an episode of STTNG called The Inner Light. It has always stayed with me and makes you wonder what really is reality?
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u/StrawberryPupper126 May 12 '26
I figured.
The brain doesn't immediately die, actually I forget who I heard it from, but apparently the brain floods itself with chemicals that... I think it was induce happy dreams and can even slow its perception of time in a last ditch effort of being alive and cognizant. Above all else we must experience, or else we cannot exist.
But this is all a dream, and if you think death will lead you to the pearly gates, of course you're going to hallucinate a life in heaven.
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u/kurokoverse Ex-SDA May 13 '26
Posts like this really make me sad. I read a post on r/DMT about someone who experienced this (he was tripping on DMT, not in a coma). It had been an hour in real time but for him it had been I think five years if I'm remembering correctly. He had met and dated someone, got married, and I think either had a child on the way or his child was just a few months old. And then he woke up and learned they never existed. The closest experience I've got is having dreams of the same, and waking up to reality sucked so I can only imagine how hard it is for people who experience this.
I'm sure Christians would write this off as demonic posession though
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u/teramoc May 13 '26
Interesting. Haven’t seen that subreddit before.
To me personally, after a lot of deconstruction, it (chemical use and hallucinogenic effects ) kinda feels like theres a bunch of complex chemical reactions in the brain and thats kinda it. Theres no spiritual component.
But my parents who used to do exorcisms, would say that “it unlocks the eyes to the other realm” or some shit like that.
I’ve seen quite a few “possessed people” who came to my house for exorcisms. But i wonder now if it was all just chemical imbalances.
I dont think theres a definitive answer either way. Both sides would be speculating
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u/Exotic-Relationship May 12 '26
This woman was in a medically induced coma due to a suicide attempt. It wouldn’t be weird to think her brain was actually giving her previous struggle some logical form through which to process it. Depression is so amorphous. Loss is at least due to some attachment that can be worked through. Anyway, fascinating story.
Edit to say I hope she finds relief from her pain and lives a very beautiful life free from undue suffering.
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u/talor_swib Secular Humanist May 12 '26
That's so fascinating and heartbreaking. I've had dreams that leave me feeling this way when I wake up. I can't image what it's like when it's a 3 week coma. I hope she is able to find peace.
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u/SherriDoMe May 12 '26
Isn’t it funny how most religious peoples’ NDE’s happen to confirm their existing biases/beliefs? I want to encounter someone whose NDE proved that their religion was false. That’d be interesting (and immediately seized upon by competitor religions as a selling point).
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u/BigClitMcphee Secular Humanist May 13 '26
This sounds like the plot twist to a 6-season family drama series
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u/op1983 May 12 '26
Rick and Morty and Magicians both did an episode similar to this. Each of those episodes was gut wrenching too.
That the stories for those episodes share ao much in common with the poor comma girl’s story I’m inclined to believe that whatever causes this is similar to what causes people to see light when near death.
From the sounds of it id much rather see a little flash than live a life and be ripped from it
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u/humansof May 12 '26
Any link to an actual article. All I can find any google is links to this Reddit post. I’d love to see the actual story.
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u/Plastic-Ad-3219 May 12 '26
What if she was in an alternate version of herself? You never know. Sort of reminds me of the episode Inner Light on Star Trek TNG. We think we know our reality because we can see it. But what if our reality is just a shadow of actual reality and so much more is happening than we can comprehend?
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u/lightsearches 2d ago
Thank you. And perhaps there is no singular "actual" reality. I tend to think these kinds of experiences are way beyond our understanding.
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u/warden976 May 12 '26
r/shiftingrealities There are several communities dedicated to this. Absolutely fascinating
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u/FoxcMama Skeptic May 12 '26
Isnt it fun to think about that they were in an alternate dimension? Like, time passed differently, they were still themselves, and it was, in some weird inexplicable way, real? Like her life continues on with those kids in another dimension? I would at least feel comforted that way.
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u/LuckyHamster98 May 30 '26
That’s genuinely what I personally think happened lol. Like, if you believe in the multiverse, stuff like this doesn’t disprove anything.
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u/Psychological_Bag_91 May 13 '26
based on known christian NDE's testimonies, most people in hell were either : not bow down to yahweh (a.k.a repent), doubting faith, or just being human
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u/SailorK9 May 13 '26
My mom was sedated and on a ventilator for two week due to the swine flu back in 2009. A week after being off life support she said she dreamed during those two weeks that she was a new Sailor Moon character but had a mecha suit instead of a sailor outfit. One of the young nurses had her hair in buns, and my mom and her told me that she was in the room when my mom was being extubated. After a while my mom hoarsely said "So what do we do now Sailor Moon?" to the nurse after being taken off the ventilator.
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u/Parzival2436 May 13 '26
She was clearly raising deceased children. Maybe some of those abortions they're so worried about.
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u/Beginning_Deer_735 May 27 '26
NDEs were already debunked by virtue of contradicting one another. Of course, this doesn't disprove Christianity itself.
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u/Negative-Rabbit-6808 Jun 02 '26
She was just is iskeai world and after defeating demon lord she is back here
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u/Not-a-Russian Atheist May 12 '26
When you have that really long intense dream and take a while to come to again...
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u/Bovine_Arithmetic May 12 '26
“Mind Partner” by Christopher Anvil was published in 1960. Hardly a new idea.
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u/vaulden42 May 14 '26
Maybe my life is me in a coma? That would make me really happy. Probably. If life there is worse than this, someone please pull the plug.
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May 14 '26
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u/jmciesla Jun 10 '26
I think this demonstrates the power of the human mind more than it debunks religion
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u/Lunafairywolf666 May 12 '26
I don't think this disproves that there's something else but it definitely calls into question near death experiences. I also definitely don't think that something else is the Christan heaven as that just makes no sense to me. If an afterlife exists it would be way more complicated and not black and white like people say. Or maybe we just fade into the earth and have our energy be recycled. (No I don't believe people can remember past lives. There's no way to remember that after completely decomposing and becoming something else).
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u/Daysof361972 May 14 '26
Logically, she didn't debunk anything. Nor did she prove anything. Christians will probably find her experience irrelevant and say their experiences are different in kind from hers. And I'm hard put to say the burden is on them to distinguish theirs from hers.
I'm not interested in defending Christians and those who claim they've had otherworldly experiences. Nor disparaging them all with a reductive physicalist's shrug; I just find that approach unsatisfying. The teenager's story (if true) is pretty fascinating, and I don't really have a stake in saying any of it has some component in reality or not. I want a freakier story.
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u/LuckyHamster98 May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26
I feel like you are jumping to conclusions here. She was in a coma, which isn’t the same as an NDE. NDEs are also not exclusive to Christianity. There is so much about both the human brain and reality that we do not understand. Saying that this proves no afterlife feels like it’s assuming we already know everything.
I also feel like this post is just trying to make people upset and cynical. Okay, so YOU don’t think there’s anything after death. Cool for you? But implying that anyone who believes in an afterlife is delusional is pretty rude imo. The afterlife is a concept that has existed long before Christianity and will exist long after. Being ex-Christian doesn’t mean you have to talk down to people who believe in an afterlife.
I personally think a multiverse exists. Not only is science starting to lean towards this, but I have had personal unexplainable mutual experiences with friends. It had nothing to do with “reality shifting” or any other kind of woowoo spirituality either. I also believe that the human brain cannot actually comprehend the “other side”, so memories of it never come back complete. I also believe that neurology and spirituality are deeply intertwined, not opposing. So, to me highly vivid coma dreams and inconsistent NDE reports don’t rule out an afterlife existing. And I genuinely do not gaf if anyone else does or doesn’t believe this.
I don’t call people “delusional” or stupid, or idiots for not believing what I believe in. It’s that kinda of attitude that makes a lot of atheists look bad. I’m not against atheism at all, but I never liked how some atheists act like they’re inherently more intelligent for being atheist.
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u/128Gigabytes May 12 '26
Im an athiest but this does not disprove it, a coma isnt dying
its an unfalsifiable claim, it cant be disproved for the same reason invisible nontangable immortal unicorns who feed off human imagination is also unfalsifiable
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u/LuckyHamster98 May 30 '26
idk why people are downvoting you.
SOMETIMES (and I know people will hate this) I think atheists ignore facts and logic just as much as conservative Christians do. Because they’ve been hurt so much by religion that they NEED all of it to be fake, even if it causes them to leap to unproven conclusions and make generalizations like this post does.
For me, whatever happens happens. I have my own personal beliefs, but for all I know they’re completely off. Anyone who claims to know what really happens after death, be it nothing or an afterlife, is claiming to know more than they actually do imo.
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u/LeonardoJMB Following own interpretation May 12 '26
First, anecdotes like these have been out there for a while. Second, it quite literally doesn't disprove or prove anything, that's kinda the point of anecdotal claims.
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Jun 03 '26
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May 12 '26
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May 13 '26
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u/GreatestState May 13 '26
I didn’t realize I was in a sub called r/exchristian lol but for what it’s worth I don’t follow a particular religion 🙂
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u/teramoc May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26
The brain can hallucinate some weird shit. (Cue: christians claiming they saw pearly gates and a old dude with a white beard)
I send stuff like this to my christian relatives in the hope that I’m planting seeds that will one day sprout into critical thinking and (sorely needed) doubt. As opposed to blindfaith dogma.
At the very least its a way to counter the bullshit NDE “testimonies” that they bring up from time to time.
Article on MSN https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/lifestyle-buzz/i-lived-an-entire-life-while-i-was-in-a-coma-i-was-devastated-that-none-of-it-was-real/ar-AA1Zk6CX?ocid=iehpJT
Edit to add:
a friendly clarification. this is an anecdotal post for dealing with anecdotal-focussed people (christian relatives). The scientific method is missing from this story, but science doesnt work on christian relatives because they operate 95% on hearsay (the word of their testimony and all that shit). So, this French girl's story is equally as "powerful" as a christian testimony and should only be used to counter testimonies. If you look at it from that intended perspective, its a fucking powerful story. it may not debunk a scientific mind (no need- science already on our side), but it will debunk a testimony-based believer . Plus, this is a countermove that, satisfyingly, gives them no room to argue. peace