Why did some people misunderstand A.J. Ayer’s near-death experience as a rejection of atheism?

Some critics misunderstood A.J. Ayer’s near-death experience as a recantation of his atheism because of the specific imagery he used to describe it. Following a collapse in 1988, Ayer recounted an experience in which he felt he had encountered the "Master of the Universe" and his ministers for space and time.1

While Ayer’s account was a subjective description of his sensory experience during a medical crisis, some observers interpreted this language as a departure from his lifelong commitment to empiricism and his rejection of metaphysical entities. In reality, Ayer remained a leading representative of logical positivism who maintained that nothing in experience justifies a belief in God. His report was an observation of his own consciousness during a state of trauma rather than a theological conversion.12