1. Introduction:
· This doesn’t prove any religion true, but it’s a powerful stepping stone because the atheist/materialist/naturalist can’t account for this evidence and will usually resemble the closeminded, dogmatic church they constantly criticize. Their criticisms don’t look good under the weight of the facts. This is strong empirical evidence for an immaterial soul or ‘self’.
· The death of a loved one can hurt so much because it’s a false and unnatural view of death. It creates an unbearable burden. Christians still grieve and mourn but within the parameters of knowing where their loved ones really are. Having a proper view of death, changes everything from the way you live your life to how you prepare for its end. Truth is important and presents yet another issue for the atheist, for they must live and act and pretend like they won’t die one day, in order to maintain sanity. Some say they can appreciate this life more because it’s all there is, but in reality, it leads to people being more self-indulgent and self-centered because…they have to make the most of it! Livability is a measurement of a worldview, and intellectually, atheism fails in multiple areas. Many people who don’t believe in God, don’t actually consider carefully all the implications of that belief. Truth, meaning, purpose, value, morality, freewill, these are all illusions and not real on atheism. But who actually lives consistently in understanding this? No one except serial killers and psychos!
· The Association for the Scientific Study of Near-death Phenomena (initial group of academic researchers) laid the foundations. It was the immediate predecessor of the International Association for Near Death Studies (IANDS). Responsible for launching Anabiosis, first peer reviewed journal within field. Later became Journal of Near-Death Studies. The first decades of acknowledgement like the 70s and 80s, the studies were retrospective but the 2000s marked prospective study. According to a 1982 gallop poll “5% of the general population in the U.S had undergone a near-death experience. That was around 8 million then, now 5% is closer to [17] million.” And that’s only in one country!
2. Heaven/Hell Tourism: This is probably what most people think of when they hear ‘near-death experience’. Here is one example but these are not the ones we will consider as evidential.
Speaking before medical professionals, Dr. Gary Habermas explained why NDE’s should be taken more seriously. A woman stood up and interrupted exclaiming “I’ve been to heaven!” she was the wife of an ear, nose and throat specialist. She recounted giving birth to her 3rd son, where she bled uncontrollably and was declared dead. When she was resuscitated, she could hardly describe where she had been. She attempted to describe the colors she saw and their beauty but stopped herself and said “no when I say color you’re thinking of blue, green, red…I’m talking about colors that no one has ever seen.” Then regarding music, she said in frustration, “When I say music you are all thinking of Beethoven or Mozart but this was unlike anything on earth.” Habermas asked her if she was certain of her presence in that world and she claimed that she was surer of inhabiting that beautiful place than she was of anyplace in this terrestrial life. Habermas asked if she would have stayed there given the choice, in light of the fact she just became a mother to a 3rd child. Looking down she started crying and pointing at her husband “I know how this sounds but he could raise our children. I would never have left that place!” In response to another question, she said “I don’t want to die or anything but I am looking forward to it.”
3. Evidential Cases: Let’s not simply believe this or anything else based on its ear-tickling merits, we should only believe things because they are actually true.
Criteria: In Death is a Doorway, Braxton Hunter lays out some criteria for accepting an NDE as evidential. This doesn’t cancel out stories not completely meeting it however. It must be 1. Documented by a medical doctor or nurse (useful if they are atheist/agnostic), 2. Documented shortly after resuscitation (to avoid a fish-tale). 3. Be testable (commonalities and/or physically impossible feats) and 4. Not contain logical inconsistencies.
Physical Body had no access to:
· In 1998, congenitally blind (from birth) patients were able to see for the first time during their NDE. Dinesh D’souza explains “they could give detailed descriptions of their medical procedures and even identify the jewelry and the colors of clothing of people around them.” Could they see without the aid of their bodies because they were momentarily free from them? There are many examples of people describing objects they were in no position to know about.
· Kimberley Clark resuscitated Maria, a heart attack patient claimed she levitated away from her body and outside the hospital where she could view the entire complex. In passing she mentioned seeing a tennis shoe on a particular ledge of the building. When investigated, the shoe was found. Not only where she said, but it matched the style, color and worn marks. Once again, many like this.
· Dr. Michael Sabom records Pam Reynolds. She underwent brain surgery to remove a basilar artery aneurysm. A dangerous technique was used in her case. Sabom explains hypothermic cardiac arrest, nicknamed operation standstill. Her body temperature was to be lowered to 60 degrees, her heartbeat and breathing stopped, brain waves flattened, blood drained from head. Reported many heavenly elements that are common but interestingly she witnessed the surgery in third person and described the surgical tool and recalled conversations.
· The Lancet published an article regarding the patient of Pim Van Lommel, MD. A man who suffered cardiac arrest and needed a ventilator because he wasn’t breathing. His teeth needed to be removed for it and he was comatose. Over a week later when he woke, he described the room he was in and who was present, his teeth went missing and he reminded staff where they went, claimed to have seen it all outside his body.
· Dr. Melvin Morse tells of Katie, who nearly drowned in a swimming pool, he thought she had a 10% chance of surviving. Once resuscitated she immediately demanded to know where Andy and Mark had gone. These were two people she’d spoken with during her NDE. She also recognized Morse as her doctor by his beard and another physician. She explained all the various rooms she was taken to in the hospital. Never missed a detail. She mentioned being guided by an angel Elizabeth to her home from the hospital. She saw her family going about their lives, what mum made for tea, where her dad was sitting, what he was doing, which toys her brother was playing with, names of songs on the radio and many other things. Everything was correct.
· Virginia pastor experienced simultaneous NDE with his Uncle who lived in North Carolina. After being resuscitated, each man was able to recount being in the presence of the other having a conversation. Neither had any prior knowledge regarding the medical condition of the other.
4. Commonalities: Raymond Moody, MD lays out several commonalities of NDE’s. These are the most regular but obviously aren’t found in all cases.
• Ineffability (can’t put into words),
• Hearing yourself pronounced dead
• Feelings of peace and quiet
• Hearing unusual noises
• Seeing a dark tunnel
• Finding yourself outside your body
• Meeting “spiritual beings”
• A very bright light experienced as a “being of light”
• A panoramic life review
• Sensing a border/limit to where you can go
• Coming back into your body
• Frustrating attempts to tell others
• Subtle “broadening and deepening” of your life afterward
• Elimination of fear of death
• Corroboration of events witnessed while out of body
• A realm where all knowledge exists
• Cities of light
What is remarkable is the actions taken by children after their experience. Their commonalities include:
· Having a powerful need to have a home, even if it’s just their bedroom.
· An equally important desire to have an “altar” of some kind in their “home.” Anything on the altar is holy to them (Rev 6,8,9,11,14,16).
· An intense curiosity about God, worship and prayer. Many insist that their parents take them to a house of worship.
· An unusual sensitivity to whatever is hurtful, or to lies, especially as reflected in world events, the media, and in “white lies” parents and siblings tell.
· A shift toward becoming fast talkers and fast thinkers with a driving need to create invent read learn.
5. Maybe they guessed? The cumulative facts and details and their specificity are usually enough to dismiss claims of prior knowledge or lucky guesses. Michael Sabom tests the theory anyway. Compares a group who didn’t have an NDE, to a group that did, in asking them to describe a standard CPR/resuscitation procedure. The results were very straightforward in dissolving the objection that people could just guess! Here’s an example of an NDE experiencer and the medical report written up about the surgery:
52-year-old man from Florida, had 2 heart attacks couple years apart. Had extensive NDE the first time. In 1978 underwent open heart surgery, had a second one in the next surgery, above his body, observed his body and medical procedures and instruments, heard snippets of convo, observations didn’t meet expectations, saw a doctor with white shoes and was the only one not wearing green scrub covers over the shoes. Sabom compared observations with medical report,
· The patient said “my head was covered and the rest of my body was draped with more that one sheet, separate sheets in layers. The report: The body was draped in the customary sterile fashion
· “I could draw you a picture of the saw they used.” Medical report “The sternum was sawed open.”
· Describes the rib separator in layman’s terms.
· Describes his ventricular aneurysm in layman’s terms.
· “he cut pieces of my heart off. He raised it and twisted it this way and that way and took time examining it.”
· “Injected something into my heart. Medical report “air was evacuated form left ventricle with a needle and syringe.
· “they took some stitches inside me first before they did the outside.
· With more details that just didn’t get included in the medical report.
6. Fraudulent Cases: These are not ignored by the experts and are taken into account. Just because some are false, it does not mean they all are. Of the millions and millions, only one would need to actually be genuine to falsify naturalism.
7. Discussion:
Materialist Backlash: Hallucinations provide a bad explanation since they don’t normally feel as real and often contain logical inconsistencies, don’t account for testable features like commonalities and physically impossible feats. If you think science will one day explain it, that’s a science of the gaps fallacy. Circular reasoning essentially. Like a scientist saying I will find out why things that go up must come down but I’m not even going to consider the possibility of gravity.
Transcending Culture: The experiences are too vague to verify a specific religion, that’s one reason why we should take them seriously. People of any faith may just put their own ideas on to the experience or in other words, their own nametag on the figure of light. These experiences span across cultural boundaries. But the commonalities are very welcoming to the Christian (or perhaps Abrahamic) beliefs. Most people were somehow aware that if they did decide to cross the border/limit they understood that it was permanent. There are some who felt like they went to Hell rather than Heaven. They’re usually quieter about it. There are some books dedicated to the compilation of the experiences and their spiritual implications.
Famous agnostic philosopher A.J Ayers in an article about his NDE, “I was confronted by a red light, exceedingly bright, and also very painful even when I turned away from it. I was aware that this light was responsible for the government of the universe.”
P.M.H. Atwater “I joyfully realized that this was my real home. On earth I had been a visitor, a misfit and a homesick stranger”
Socrates “Death is one of two things. Either it is annihilation, and the dead have no consciousness of anything; or as we are told, it is really a change: a migration of the soul from one place to another.”
8. Other sources:
· The Self Does Not Die – Titus Rivas, Anny Dirven and Rudolf H. Smit. Published by IANDS International association for near-death studies. Contains over 100 reliable firsthand accounts of NDE’s later verified as accurate by independent sources. Effort to present the most confirmed cases of consciousness beyond death. The cases here are a product of thorough investigation of the literature. The criterion was that it must be directly confirmed by at least one other person.
· Braxton Hunter’s Death is a Doorway.
· Heaven and Hell: Dr. George Ritchie’s Near-Death Experience.
· The Big Book of Near-Death Experiences. Hampton Roads Publishing Company.
· Holden, Janice Miner & Greyson, Bruce. The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences. Praeger.
· Evidence of the Afterlife. Long, Jeffrey & Perry, Paul.
· Morse, Melvin. Closer to the light: Learning from the Near Death Experiences of Children.
· Recollections of death: a medical investigation
· Moody, Raymond. Life after life. Introduced the world to nde, musrt read.
· Near Death Experiences: Irreducible Mind (Part 5) - YouTube video description as well