22 replies to this topic

[Karlis]

www.vanguardngr.com said:

A 67-year old mother of three resurrected 12 days after being pronounced clinically dead. She was certified dead on January 7, 2012 but is now back to life, hale and hearty. Members of the Elders Council of the church to which Mrs.Babatunde belonged had actually contributed some money in support of her burial when they heard of her demise only to be told later that she was back to life. Read more...

[Simbi Laveau]

That's Nigeria.
The literal ground zero of voodoo.They have every manner of zombie powder there is.
She was slipped a mickey that looks like death,and woke up 12 days later.
Her slowed metabolism ,is why decay didn't occur.
Nothing miraculous about it,and everyone involved probably knows it,but it makes a good story.

Edited by Simbi Laveau, 24 April 2012 - 08:37 AM.

[eight bits]

The story nicely illustrates how hard it is to give a definitive diagnosis of death. The subject is a little ghoulish, but premature burial happens in modern developed countries, too. Just goolgebing the phrase.

The concern is even Biblical. Jesus doesn't "take credit" for reviving Jairus' daughter. You aren't surely dead until you start to rot, and even that can be mistaken.

Some funeral practices, like burial and cremation, "finish the job." Others, like entombment and exposure, do not. People leave their tombs, as inevitably as any other receiver operating characteristic phenomenon is inevitable.

I was surprised that a Christian advocate posted this. "Inevitable" is the antithesis of "miracle." The story could hardly have mentioned religion more often, showing that God squadders will make up a miracle from the merely rare. (In fairness, in a near-by thread, atheists are falling all over themselves making up bogus ballistics and endocrinology to "explain" a story which was misreported by the Huffington Post. So, both sides spin the truth, hoping to further their religious agendas.)

Worse, if death is still misdiagnosed in our time, think how much easier that would  have been in the ancient world. And whatever the era, if being entombed 12 days isn't the end of the story, then Lazarus' four days speak for themselves.

[Leonardo]

Simbi and eb,

Your comments are well-made, but I'm not sure this story even warrants your acceptance of it as being as factual as you both suggest it might be.

Any person believed to be dead and injected daily for a dozen days with a preservative in sufficient quantity to stop them from decaying, would likely be dead in actual fact. And if that aspect of the story is false, then how can we trust any other aspect of it?

There has to be reasonable suspicion that there was no certification of death, and that the story may be almost completely fabricated.

Edited by Leonardo, 24 April 2012 - 10:24 AM.

[eight bits]

Leo

Quote

There has to be reasonable suspicion that there was no certification of death, and that the story may be almost completely fabricated.

Well, there are three theories, apart from the God Squad's. I made no comment about Simbi's hypothesis at all, since I have no idea whether drug-induced zombification is practiced where the story orignates.

I did mention the current thread where we have full before-and-after documentation of a "miracle" report being outrightly fabricated by second-hand "improvement" of a totally secular "drive-by shooting" story. So, I didn't exclude the possibility that what Karlis posted is simply false.

My main point is that if death can be correctly diagnosed when it occurs, then it is inevitable that death will sometimes be "diagnosed" when it hasn't occurrred. The ROC for death is good these days in the developed countries, of course, but the error rate cannot be identically zero. Some people will leave their tombs as surely as somebody will win the lotto.

So, taking the report at face value, the God Squad has repackaged the lawful operation of material principles as if  this was some suspension of material laws. This is obviously done in hopes of promoting a religious agenda. The OP story could hardly be any clearer about that.

Unfortunately for the Squad, fudging the physics backfires, since it casts doubt on one of their own favorite stories. The incident in that story, of course, could also have been faked with drugs or simply made up from whole cloth after the alleged incident.

My own heuristic, however, is not to ascribe malice to what is fully explained by incompetence.
-

Edited by eight bits, 24 April 2012 - 11:05 AM.

[ai_guardian]

This alone has a bad 'smell' to it (no pun intended)...

excerpt from source said:

On Saturday, 7 January, 2012, around 10 p.m. ... was seriously ill and on admission in hospital.

...by 2 a.m. that is Sunday morning that she had been confirmed dead by a doctor’s report...

...the protests and nationwide strike against fuel subsidy removal made it impossible to travel...

...the corpse of Mama was rejected at the hospital in Akure because of the strike

I don't pretend to know for a sec how they operate over there so the bad 'smell' could be just me, but since she was "on admission in hospital" at 10pm, "confirmed dead" by a doctor at 2am (I assume at the hospital) why then cannot they accept her corpse at the hospital due to some strike that makes it impossible to travel? Did it involve stretchers too or something, hmmm?

[Simbi Laveau]

Well i admit,I skimmed over the article.The minute I saw it was Nigeria,it registered as zombie powder. The Nigerians have herbs they cannot even detect with modern tests.
Stuff we have no knowledge of,indiginous to the area.So who knows what they can do to make such a scenario occur.

My bets are zombie powder ,if its real. She looks with it though.A lot of haitian zombie powders make the individual a bit wonky when they ,"come back to life".
Some brain cell death must occur.Just a guess,but it seems like a reasonable one.

[Leonardo]

eight bits, on 24 April 2012 - 10:58 AM, said:

My own heuristic, however, is not to ascribe malice to what is fully explained by incompetence.
-

Quite right too, although you are far more forgiving of the apparent beneficial result this story had on (and for) the Christian population in the area it occurred, than I am.

I noted:

* The woman's son-in-law - Pastor Andrew Ozoemena, who related the story to the media.
* He was apparently informed of the critical nature of his mother-in-law's illness by her brother - Pastor Amos.
* The woman sneezed and opened her eyes after 9 days of "lying in state". Was she actually unconscious all that time, or faking it?
* A neighbour - Evangelist Femi Alu, put them in contact with a doctor - Evangelist Ezekial, at the JUT Hospital.
* They related that, with the testimony of the woman's miraculous recovery, several of the doctor's colleagues became "born again".
* The woman relates her experience of seeing Heaven, Jesus and God, and then Jesus giving her a "tour of Hell".
* The woman then relates she was given a purpose by Jesus for her 'return', which was to evangelise about her 'vision'.

Call me cynical, but I smell a rat.

[highdesert50]

Sustained absence of a heart rhythm on a twelve lead EKG would be a definitive measure of death. This procedure, along with the real-time hospital monitoring, would make an argument for "real" death. But, even if monitoring heart rhythms was not practiced, the idea of her regaining consciousness after that extended period of time without organ failure and side-stepping internment is indeed miraculous.

[Cryptozological Mascot]

I hear a new Misfits song...

[zenfahr]

Leonardo, on 24 April 2012 - 05:40 PM, said:

Quite right too, although you are far more forgiving of the apparent beneficial result this story had on (and for) the Christian population in the area it occurred, than I am.

I noted:

* The woman's son-in-law - Pastor Andrew Ozoemena, who related the story to the media.
* He was apparently informed of the critical nature of his mother-in-law's illness by her brother - Pastor Amos.
* The woman sneezed and opened her eyes after 9 days of "lying in state". Was she actually unconscious all that time, or faking it?
* A neighbour - Evangelist Femi Alu, put them in contact with a doctor - Evangelist Ezekial, at the JUT Hospital.
* They related that, with the testimony of the woman's miraculous recovery, several of the doctor's colleagues became "born again".
* The woman relates her experience of seeing Heaven, Jesus and God, and then Jesus giving her a "tour of Hell".
* The woman then relates she was given a purpose by Jesus for her 'return', which was to evangelise about her 'vision'.

Call me cynical, but I smell a rat.

those were my thoughts, this sounds staged.

[FlyingAngel]

The delay of the burial could be because God's plan

[the L]

This is why I think that urban legend stories about burried alive is truthfull stories.

Look at this article.

http://www.reuters.c...149975820070917

[the L]

Simbi Laveau, on 24 April 2012 - 04:19 PM, said:

Well i admit,I skimmed over the article.The minute I saw it was Nigeria,it registered as zombie powder. The Nigerians have herbs they cannot even detect with modern tests.
Stuff we have no knowledge of,indiginous to the area.So who knows what they can do to make such a scenario occur.

My bets are zombie powder ,if its real. She looks with it though.A lot of haitian zombie powders make the individual a bit wonky when they ,"come back to life".
Some brain cell death must occur.Just a guess,but it seems like a reasonable one.

What is zombie powder?

[Simbi Laveau]

Cryptozological Mascot, on 27 April 2012 - 02:19 PM, said:

I hear a new Misfits song...

Or an old Rob Zombie song