Maryjane,
First, I am confused about who you really are.
By chance, I came across your profile page where a picture of what appears to be a strong, good-looking, muscular man, wearing shorts and T-shirt, as if he has just returned from a strenuous work-out in the gym, is placed under the profile name Maryjane. Is this actually you and you're pretending to be a woman? or is it an image of your husband who has died? Or were you involved in a gay marriage?
"Yup. I detect attitude."
My comment has nothing to do with attitude. I am merely making a subjective point. I could just as easily turn your argument around and state many atheists I meet have a serious attitude about anyone who doesn't agree with them. Offering an opposite opinion is healthy, in my view. Without this, there might not be debates. How boring life would be then.
Apparently you missed talking to people who lost loved ones. They have lucid dreams all the time. I've had a few myself.
I have spoken to many who have lost loved ones. Only a few weeks ago I conversed with a 70 year-old woman who had recently lost her husband. After the funeral and wake, she came back home alone, to find her husband, looking alive and well, sitting on the lounge sofa. They had a 10 minute conversation before he suddenly disappeared. Is this what you mean by a lucid dream?
If so, I would not.
Some might say the woman had a chat with the ghost or spirit of her husband. The atheists might say, the woman was so grief-stricken that the mind had created this imaginary scenario as a sense of comfort and a way of denying his death.
My understanding of a lucid dream is that while asleep, the dream seems so real, you believe it is actually occurring. i.e it is not the mind simply enjoying some mental masturbation of random events.
If, for example, you attended the
Monroe Institute and carried out their course, then this vivid experience might be termed an OOBE. That when asleep, your consciousness regularly leaves the physical and moves into other realms of reality - different dimensions of time and space. Here, you meet deceased loved ones etc.. but on waking you have no memory of these experiences. The difference with a lucid dream is, you do.
I was close to my mother and after she died, for some years, I had lucid dreams about being with her in spirit. Sometimes, I would wake up with tears in my eyes too.
Now, it is all down to your beliefs. The atheists might say, this was your mind finding a way of coming to terms with her death. Others might say you were actually with her in spirit whilst asleep and because of the emotional power involved, you remembered the event whilst it was occurring and then afterwards on awaking.
"I poured over a lot of this stuff when I was first widowed. You aren't telling me anything I haven't already heard. Why do I dismiss it? Because I've critically thought about it. It has nothing to do with my being an atheist."
You come over as someone who has genuinely researched this area with some care. And I accept your views may have little to do with atheism although I do note you are a group member of
Atheists and Agnostics.
In Britain, we have a well-known former TV news presenter called John Humphreys. He now works on BBC radio. In the twilight of his years, he wanted to research the afterlife and his experiences led to a book, published last September, called
In God We Doubt. As the headline screams,
He went looking for God and ended up an angry agnostic.
While one part of him wanted to 'believe', another part was unable to after looking at the religious evidence.
In God we doubt -Times Online
My suggestion would be to keep God well and truly out of it. I am not religious and don't accept there is a benevolent God. Like you, I have studied the evidence thoroughly BUT unlike you, come to the opposite conclusion that
there is an afterlife - although it has nothing to do with the religious viewpoint. I am happy and comfortable with my own conclusions. There is little more I can say.