Near-Death Experiences as Evidence for the Existence of God and Heaven: A Brief Introduction in Plain Language (23 page)
Authors: J. Steve Miller
1) Kenneth
Ring surveyed three university classes (111 students), which covered the topic
of NDEs. After the courses, most students reported a decreased fear of death, a
stronger belief in life after death, a more spiritual orientation, a stronger
belief in the purposefulness of life, and a strengthened view of God. [The impact
of near-death experiences on persons who have not had them: A report of a
preliminary study and two replications.
Journal of Near-Death Studies
13:229 (1995).] Whereas some of van Lommel’s patients in Holland became
“spiritual,” but showed less interest in traditional religion, Sartori reported
of her patients (overwhelmingly Welsh): “All patients reported an increased
tendency to pray, go to church, and read the Bible.”
The Near-Death
Experiences of Hospitalized Intensive Care Patients
, 244.
2)
Consciousness
Beyond Life
, 284.
3)
Life After Life
, 58,59.
4)
Consciousness Beyond Life
, 284.
5)
Life After Life
, 64.
6) Ibid., 59.
7) Ibid., 59.
8)
Consciousness Beyond Life
, 34.
9) Ibid. 29.
10) Susan Blackmore,
Dying to Live
(Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books,
1993), xii.
11)
Consciousness
Beyond Life
, 35.
12) Ibid., 55.
13)
Life After Life
, 65.
14) Ibid.,
63.
15)
Consciousness
Beyond Life
, 151.
16) Steve Sjogren,
The Day I Died
(Ventura: Regal Books, 2006), 31. The
wife of one of Sartori’s patients reported this change in her husband. “[He] is
very different since the experience; he is very loving towards me. Before he
used to do as he pleased and go out driving in the car whenever he wanted
without giving me a second thought. Now, he won’t go out unless I want to go
out too. He is far more considerate and I feel like he’s more loving and
affectionate” (
The Near-Death Experiences of Hospitalized Intensive Care
Patients
, 293).
17)
Life After Life
, 65, 93.
18) In one of my personal interviews, the NDEr talked with three celestial
beings, explaining to them why he felt that he needed to return for his family.
Moody shared an experience where an elderly aunt was ill and the family kept
praying for her to recover. Finally, the aunt told a family member that she’d
seen the other side and wanted to stay there, but their prayers were hindering
her from going over. She died shortly after they stopped praying for her
recovery. (Ibid., 81)
19)
Consciousness Beyond Life
, 151.
20) Ibid., 53.
21)
Ibid.,
151.
22) Ibid.,
152.
23)
Consciousness Beyond Life
, xiii.
24) Ibid., 29. As Moody stated, “almost everyone remarks upon the
time-lessness
of this out-of-body state.”
Life After Life
, 47.
25)
Life
After Life
, 43.
26)
Consciousness Beyond Life
, 21.
27) One described it “as if I was seeing with all-knowing eyes. (Ibid., 36)
28)
Life After Life
, 143,144.
29)
Consciousness Beyond Life
, 29-31.
30) Sartori notes, “Research (Grey 1987, Fenwick and Fenwick 1996a, Ellwood
2001, Rommer 2000) has served to highlight that negative NDEs are just as real
as the pleasant ones and can occur in the absence of anesthetics” (
The
Near-Death Experiences of Hospitalized Intensive Care Patients
, 18). She
further states, “Religious beliefs and prior knowledge do not appear to
influence the experience as cross-cultural studies reveal a similar pattern
regardless of content of the experience or cultural beliefs” (23). “There are
cases that have both pleasant and frightening components; they may begin as
frightening and convert to pleasant (Bonenfant 2001) or vice versa (Irwin and
Bramwell 1988)” (24). In her study, “13.3% had ‘frightening’ NDEs, consistent
with three other studies which found 12.5% (Grey 1987), 15% (Atwater 1992) and
18% (Rommer 2000). See
The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences
, Chapter
4, for a good review of the literature on distressing NDEs.
31) According to
The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences
, 70, although nine
studies with 459 experiencers found no accounts of distressing NDEs, “12 other
studies involving 1,369 experiencers produced the accounts of 315 people (23%)
who reported NDEs ranging from disturbing to terrifying or despairing.” For a
recent book dedicated to distressing NDEs, see
Dancing Past the Dark:
Distressing Near-Death Experiences
, by Nancy Evans Bush (2012).
32)
Consciousness Beyond Life
, v.,vi.
33) The atheists I read don’t claim to have a slam dunk argument for atheism.
After all, how could you ever prove with any degree of certainty that there is
no God? Instead, they make the more humble claim that they see no strong
evidence for the existence of God. In a discussion such as this, it should (if
all people were objective) take only one strong line of evidence to move an
honest seeker from atheism to theism. This can happen with scientific theories.
Reference the white swan theory being decimated by the sighting of one black
swan.
Appendix
#1
1) Raymond
Moody,
Paranormal
(New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 47,48.
2) Ibid.,
63.
3)
Ibid., 77.
4) I
found this NDE on
www.nderf.org
. Dr. Alexander
reported that his “companion” during his NDE appeared at first in human form,
wearing a beautiful dress, then as an “orblike ball of light,” then later
returned to human form.
Proof of Heaven
(New York: Simon & Schuster,
2012), 68.
5)
The
Handbook of Near-death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation
(Santa
Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, LLC), 140-148.
6) Jeffrey
Long,
Evidence for the Afterlife
(New York: HarperOne, 2010), 9.
7) For instance: NDE #1307 on
www.nderf.org
–
like a “movie of myself and of my entire life…” “I could sense the real
meaning of these relationships.” “I had a sense of love and gratitude
towards the persons appearing in my flash back.” “This panoramic review of
my life was very distinct, every little detail of the incidents, relationships
were there – the relationships in some sort of distilled essence of
meaning. Persons were life-like, living pictures, with all their
personality, inner selves.” NDE #2136 – went through the life review like a
powerpoint. NDE #2913 – experienced life events going by in quick succession.
8) From
www.nderf.org
.
9) Ibid.,
NDE #49.
10) Ibid.,
#1828.
11) Ibid.,
#116.
12) Ibid.,
#1720.
13)
Ibid., #1465.
14) Ibid.,
#2838.
Appendix
#2
1)
Charles Q. Choi, Peace of Mind: Near-Death Experiences Now Found to Have
Scientific Explanations,
Scientific American
, September 12, 2011, p.
127
. I often find such assertions in NDE literature, by both
survivalists and naturalists, suggesting that all the NDE elements have been
replicated by natural means. Yet, every time that I check their documentation,
the experiences seem very different in many respects. For example: 1. Melvin
Morse, David Venecia, and Jerrold Milstein, Near-death experiences: A
neurophysiological explanatory model.
Journal of Near-Death Studies
8:48, 1989 (from Handbook, pp. 217,218) - “…all the reported elements of NDEs
can be produced in the office setting” with inhaled carbon dioxide. 2. M.A. Persinger,
1989. Modern neuroscience and near-death experiences: Expectancies and
implications. Persinger comments on “A neurobiological model for near-death
experiences.”
Journal of Near-Death Studies
7:234 (1989) – “a vast
clinical and surgical literature…indicates that floating and rising sensations,
OBEs, personally profound mystical and religious encounters, visual and
auditory experiences, and dream-like sequences are evoked, usually as single
events, by electrical stimulation of deep, mesiobasal temporal love
structures.” Persinger went on to claim that through using transcranial
magnetic stimulation, he had produced “all the major components of the NDE,
including out-of-body experiences, floating, being pulled towards a light,
hearing strange music, and profound meaningful experiences” [
The Handbook of
Near-death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation
(Santa Barbara,
California: ABC-CLIO, LLC), 220]; 3. Saavedra-Aguilar, J.C., and Gomez-Jeria,
J.S., 1989. A neurobiological model for near-death experiences.
Journal of
Near-Death Studies
7:209 - “The list of mental phenomena seen in temporal
lobe epilepsy and stereotaxic stimulation of the temporal lobe includes all the
NDE phenomena.” (
The Handbook of Near-death Experiences,
219) 4. Michael
Shermer, executive director of the Skeptics Society, stated in a March 2003
article, Demon-Haunted Brain, published in
Scientific American
,
“Neuroscientist Michael Persinger, in his laboratory at Laurentian University
in Sudbury, Ontario, for example, can induce all these perceptions [out-of-body
experiences] in subjects by subjecting their temporal lobes to patterns of
magnetic fields” (
http://www.michaelshermer.com/2003/03/demon-haunted-brain
).
Shermer goes on to quote van Lommel’s study as delivering “blows against the
belief that mind and spirit are separate from brain and body,” when in fact van
Lommel’s study gave strong evidence
opposing
this thesis. See van
Lommel’s response to Shermer here:
http://www.nderf.org/NDERF/Research/vonlommel_skeptic_response.htm
.)
5. Susan Blackmore claims that “all the components of the NDE can occur under
other conditions, under the influence of drugs, stress, or even during dreams.”
Dying to Live
(London: HarperCollins, 1993), 49. 6. Dr. Kevin Nelson
claims that “Lempert’s team compared the experience of their subjects to
Moody’s descriptions of the near-death experience. Surprisingly, they found “
no
real difference
[emphasis his] between the two types of experience.” [
The
Spiritual Doorway to the Brain
(New York: Dutton, 2011), 124] This is quite
a claim. From Nelson’s description, Lempert has practically reproduced NDEs
with induced fainting. Yet, as I show in Appendix #6, a perusal of Lempert’s
study shows significant differences in almost every respect. It would seem that
this claim has taken on the status of a stubborn urban myth in the NDE
literature that needs to be thoroughly researched. Every time I look up the
cited sources and study the original data, the stark differences between NDEs
and the reported naturalistic experiences become apparent.
2)
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
,
Volume 15, Issue 10
,
447-449, 18 August 2011.
3)
“…Here
in Spain the paper was mentioned in "Cuarto Milenio", a popular TV
show on parapsychology, in a radio program "MIlenio 3", in one of the
main newspapers, "el ABC", and in "el Mundo". Guess what
the headline was in all of them: "The Science Finally Explains the NDEs.
There is nothing paranormal about them"? The French newspaper "le
Figaro" publishes a similar review of this paper. So does the Russian
"Коммерсантъ".
(From the discussion at the end of this interview:
http://www.skeptiko.com/165-dr-caroline-watt-defends-there-is-nothing-paranormal-about-near-death-experiences/
.)
4)
Life
After Life
, 156-177.
5)
Science
and the Near-Death Experience
, 150-215.
6)
Consciousness
Beyond Life
, 105-135.
7)
Penny
Sartori,
The Near Death Experiences of Hospitalized Intensive Care Patients:
A Five-Year Clinical Study
(New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2008), 57-120.
8)
The
Handbook of Near-death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation
(Santa
Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, LLC), 213-234.
10) As
Pim van Lommel stated in a published reply to Mobbs and Watt, “I am deeply
concerned that articles like Mobbs’ and Watt’s are passing the peer review
process when the authors did not even acknowledge…existing literature that
contradicts their stated position.”
Journal of Near-Death Studies
,
30(2), Winter 2011.
11)
The
Handbook of Near-Death Studies
, 7.
12)
Journal
of Near-Death Studies
, vol. 30, no. 2, Winter 2011, Pim van Lommel, Guest
Editorial; Setting the Record Straight; Correcting Two Recent Cases, 108,109.
14) In
Chapter 4 I didn’t mention Mobbs’ and Watt’s explanation of the feeling of
being dead, since it’s not commonly argued. They note that the brain can fool
people into thinking they’re dead. It’s called Cotard syndrome. They cite a
case in which a patient was diagnosed with epilepsy and encephalitis. Yet, her
conviction that she’d died was completely irrational, since she could touch her
body and note that she was physically walking around and talking to living
people. She was delusional. She didn’t know how she supposedly died, but
suggested it may have been when she had the flu a few weeks prior. She also
reported hallucinating disco music, moving walls, and the feeling of water
running down her left forearm. R. McKay, L. Cipolotti, Attributional Style in a
Case of Cotard Delusion,
Consciousness and Cognition,
16 (2007), 353.
Reading the details of the study confirms that her experience was
very, very different from NDErs rationally concluding that they must have died,
based upon such empirical data as hearing a doctor pronouncing them dead,
seeing their lifeless bodies from a distance, walking through people, seeing
heavenly beings, meeting God, etc.
Not only is Cotard syndrome very different from the NDE experience
of death, but Mobbs and Watt fail to connect the syndrome with NDEs. They admit
that “why delusions such as Cotard syndrome occur is unknown.” So what data
compels us to believe that Cotard syndrome would likely occur during a
near-death event? Simply noting that some delusional people think they’re dead
in no way proves that the NDE experience of feeling dead is illusory.
15)
Dying to Live
, 34.
16)
Dying to Live
, 39.
17) Mobbs claims in a reply to criticism that he read Holden’s chapter on
Veridical Experiences and that it presented only one case study of veridical
perception. (Response to Greyson, et al. There is nothing paranormal about
near-death experiences, Dean Mobbs,
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
,
September 2012, vol. 16, no. 9), p. 446. Yet, Holden’s chapter was a review of
the literature on the subject, not an attempt to present details of individual
studies. She documented her chapter meticulously and pulled together
documentation for over 100 examples of NDEs with corroboration in 43 different
NDE studies.
18.
http://www.skeptiko.com/165-dr-caroline-watt-defends-there-is-nothing-paranormal-about-near-death-experiences
.
19.
http://www.skeptiko.com/165-dr-caroline-watt-defends-there-is-nothing-paranormal-about-near-death-experiences
.