Near-Death Experiences as Evidence for the Existence of God and Heaven: A Brief Introduction in Plain Language (18 page)

Fortunately,
Blackmore quickly settles into research mode and begins analyzing the data,
making some helpful contributions to the discussion along the way. For an
extended discussion of
Dying to Live
, see Appendix #5.   

Light
& Death
, Michael Sabom, M.D., 1998
-
While Blackmore examined NDEs through the lens of atheism,
Light &
Death
peers through the lens of Christianity. Sabom’s first study slowly
shifted his worldview from “when we die, we die” to “there’s an afterlife,” while
leaving his readers to make their own decisions about most religious implications.
This second study finds a Sabom who’s adopted a more decidedly Christian
worldview,
(9)
addressing questions of religious significance, such as:

·
        
Do
NDErs report connections between prayer and their NDEs?

·
        
Are
miraculous healings associated with NDEs?

·
        
Do
NDEs lead people toward New Age expressions of faith, and away from
institutional religion, as some researchers have reported?

·
        
What
does the Bible teach about issues related to NDEs?

·
        
Is
it possible that some beings that appear benevolent in NDEs are actually malevolent
beings masquerading as angels of light?

To
answer these and other questions, he interviewed 160 patients, mostly from his
own practice. Forty-seven of these had near-death experiences and the rest were
used for a baseline comparison.
(10)  

From
an evidential perspective, highlights of the book include the first full
description of the Pam Reynolds case
(11)
and his testing of the thesis
that NDEs tend to lead people away from traditional religion (he concludes that
they don’t).
(12)

Proof
of Heaven,
Eben Alexander, M.D., 2012
-
The above books study multiple NDEs. But there’s value in reading full
accounts of a few deep experiences written by NDErs themselves. An NDE occurs
in the context of someone’s life – a context which isn’t typically explored in
studies of multiple NDEs. Why begin with Alexander?

Imagine
that scientists decided to send someone to the other side who had impeccable credentials
to report back on what he experienced. Alexander would be their man. He taught
academic neurology at Harvard for 15 years. He wrote over 150 articles/chapters
in academic medical literature. Although he had never studied NDE literature,
he firmly believed that NDEs were produced solely by the brain, having nothing
to do with God or heaven. When he slipped into a coma, he was at home and had
no idea he was in danger of dying (thus no influence from expectations). He
also experienced hallucinations, so that he could reflect upon the differences
between the two.

Alexander
wrote, not to satisfy every skeptic by examining detailed arguments pro and
con. Instead, he wrote a very personal story of his experience and how it destroyed
his naturalistic paradigm. I’m seeing more and more that in dealing with
worldviews, rational people can look at the same data and draw diametrically
opposed conclusions. Thus, the need to examine how people make paradigm shifts.
Alexander’s case is fascinating to explore in that regard. Additionally his
experience contains a couple of instances of corroboration (e.g., seeing a deceased
relative he’d neither met nor seen a picture of).  

Return
from Tomorrow
, by George G. Ritchie, M.D., 1978
- In
addition to sending a neurologist, scientists would want to send an
accompanying psychiatrist, to make sure they covered all mental/brain
activities. George Ritchie was a respected Psychiatrist, his story having
historical significance in that he was the first to expose Moody to NDEs.
Ritchie was trying to recover from pneumonia when his bodily functions ceased
and he was declared dead. (He’d later show students at the University of Virginia
his death certificate.) Like Alexander, he wasn’t expecting death and thus had
no expectation of an NDE. Corroboration included an out-of-body trip to a city
he’d never visited, which he later travelled through and recognized.       
 

Beyond
Death’s Door
, Maurice Rawlings, M.D., 1978
- Dr.
Rawlings is a respected cardiologist who believed that death was the end of
life until he repeatedly resuscitated a patient who, panic stricken, claimed he
was going to hell each time he died.
This harrowing experience forced
Dr. Rawlings to reexamine the basis of his naturalistic assumptions and to
encourage his patients to talk about their near-death experiences. He concluded
that near-death experiences were indeed visits to the other side and that
hellish experiences were underreported due to patients suppressing
uncomfortable memories. Serious researchers were slow to acknowledge
frightening NDEs, but eventually began to study them. Rawlings interprets these
experiences from a conservative Christian worldview.

Evidence
of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences, Jeffrey Long, MD, with
Paul Perry, 2010
-
Dr.
Long, a
radiation oncologist, has gathered over 3,000 (and
growing) first-hand accounts of NDEs on his website:
http://www.nderf.org
.

While
he’s studied thousands of such experiences, he did an extensive survey of over
600 of his earliest participants, so that he’s able to provide data based on
larger numbers than most studies. For example, he can report that 76.2 percent
felt “incredible peace or pleasantness.”

Other
benefits of his web-based approach include:

·
        
Reports
from people who might be reluctant to share in a face-to-face interview.

·
        
A
global sampling. An assistant found over 250 volunteers to translate reports
written in a multitude of languages.
(13)  

·
        
The
opportunity to examine the questions ourselves to make sure they’re not worded
to create a certain outcome, since the survey is standard for all participants.

·
        
The
ability to avoid the problem of interviewers either consciously or
unconsciously encouraging embellishment, since subjects aren’t interviewed
personally.
(14)

Although
Long writes in a journalistic style for a popular audience, he often documents
his sources and shows familiarity with the scholarly literature on NDEs. He considers
the evidence for both spiritual and naturalistic explanations, coming out
clearly on the side of believing in life after death.

Each
type of study has its strengths and weaknesses. A weakness of anonymous surveys
is that it’s difficult to corroborate people’s reports. Thus, they open
themselves to the criticism of being “merely anecdotal.” Yet, this is the
nature of any large survey, such as a Gallup report.

To minimize
fraudulent claims, Long used the common technique of wording the same question
in different ways (redundancy), to catch inconsistencies. Also, he noted that
there was little incentive to make up a story. NDErs receive no money and full
names aren’t attached, so they’re not getting publicity in hopes of landing on talk
shows. The survey is quite extensive, so that it’s quite a commitment of time
for someone to submit a false report. Still, even with all the safeguards, we
can’t be 100 percent sure that some fraudulent stories haven’t slipped through.
In surveys of this nature, researchers assume that the high number of overall
responders will protect against the results being significantly skewed.

From
the beginning of the book, Long tells his audience that NDEs have convinced him
that there’s life after death. His unbridled enthusiasm will come across to
some as bias or lack of sufficient skepticism. For example, he pretty much
accepts each report at face value, accepting that if someone claims they saw
something specific while out of body, that this qualifies as evidence. I think
his book would have been strengthened by showing more reserve in his evaluation
of such testimonies, such as writing,

“If this person’s telling the truth,
this is marvelous evidence for the afterlife. Since it’s similar to reports
that prospective researchers such as Sabom corroborated with patient records
and eye-witnesses among his colleagues, I have a general trust in such
reports.”      

The
Near-Death Experiences of Hospitalized Intensive Care Patients: A Five-Year
Clinical Study,
Dr. Penny Sartori, 2008 - When Sartori heard
her first NDE report from a patient, she dismissed it as wishful thinking.
(15)
It was only later that she found the serious literature on the subject and
became intrigued.
Dr. Sartori presents the results of her study of patients in an intensive
therapy unit who reported NDEs, so that it’s broader than just cardiac patients.
She researched under the supervision of two British experts on NDEs – Professor
Paul Badham and Dr. Peter Fenwick. It’s the UK’s first ever long-term
prospective study (overwhelmingly Welsh patients).  It’s thorough – 564 pages
and painstakingly documented – covering not only her prospective study, but
additionally the history of NDEs (48 pages), a discussion of physiological and
psychological explanations (60 pages) and much rumination about implications of
the study.

One
of her purposes was to investigate “possible physiological or psychological
factors that could be the cause of the phenomenon.”
(16)
In her data
analysis she carefully recorded the treatment, including arterial blood gas
levels, heart rhythm, drugs, etc. She found .8 percent of all the patients
reporting NDEs/OBEs, including 18 percent of cardiac arrest patients.
(17)

Sartori
shows a thorough mastery of the NDE literature throughout. Her bibliography of
almost 500 publications, current up until about 2006, offers a wonderful source
to guide further study.  

It’s
helpful, from an evidential standpoint, that she included full interviews in
her appendixes, not only of the NDEs, but also hallucinations. Her description
of hallucinations from the patients in her study
(18)
showed the random
and bizarre nature of hallucinations, as contrasted with NDEs. She noted, “The
patients who had an NDE in addition to hallucinations, or had hallucinated in
the past, were able to distinguish between the two experiences.”
(19)
“Interviewing
a total sample also reduced the risk of bias and ensured that no experience was
overlooked.”
(20)
This kept the “file drawer effect” at bay, whereby researchers
are tempted to discount experiences that don’t fit their hypotheses and report only
the ones that fit.  

She
was very careful to explore all the possibilities of patients being able to get
at the supposed veridical perception from natural means. This made the experiences
she deemed compelling all the more powerful.  

Note:
If the price is outside of your budget, either urge your library to purchase a
copy, or borrow it through interlibrary loan.  

Irreducible
Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century,
Edward
F. Kelley, et.al., 2009
- Eben Alexander recommends this book
“for those still stuck in the trap of scientific skepticism,” praising its
“rigorous scientific analysis.” At 800 pages, it’s thorough. I recommend it
because the data that challenges naturalism goes beyond NDEs. This book, by
academic heavyweights in the fields of psychology and psychiatry, covers NDEs,
but also related phenomena such as mystical states of consciousness, extreme
psychophysical influence, the empirical study of the mind-body problem, and memory.
 
   

The
Light Beyond: New Explorations by the Author of Life after Life,
Raymond
A. Moody, 1988
-
After his research for
Life after
Life
, Moody compiled over a thousand new case histories of people with
NDEs. He shares parts of these stories and gives us his latest thoughts. He
brings us up to date (as of 1988) with other academic research, introducing us
to the main players. The latter was particularly interesting and valuable to
me. It’s intriguing and enlightening to see how physicians and researchers get
pulled into this field.