Near-Death Experiences as Evidence for the Existence of God and Heaven: A Brief Introduction in Plain Language (24 page)

Appendix
#4

1) Raymond
A. Moody,
The Light Beyond
(New York: Bantam Books, 1988), 18; Note also Michael B. Sabom,
Recollections of Death
, 145, 184-186 on the nature of the evidence. See
also Moody in
Life After Life
, 177-186.

2) Moody’s autobiography,
Paranormal
(New York:
HarperCollins, 2012), yields insight into why he was so reluctant to declare
that NDEs offered proof of heaven and God. First, as a philosophy student at
the University of Virginia, he was impressed by Socrates’ unique ability to
help people see that their positions weren’t as solid as they thought. Thus, he
eschewed dogmatism, knowing that strong opinions could often be overturned. He
certainly didn’t want to give people a false assurance of heaven, only to have
that hope overturned by future research. Second, he knew that NDEs were not
experiences with a person’s final death. They were something intermediate.
Thus, what people experience in a
near
-death experience doesn’t
necessarily tell us about a person’s
final
death experience. Third,
Moody had a very uncomfortable relationship with his father, who didn’t believe
in God and wouldn’t even listen to arguments for anything paranormal. According
to Moody, “I feared my father greatly – I still do” (228). Perhaps he wanted to
please his father by remaining publically skeptical. Fourth, he wanted
Life After
Life
to be accepted by the scientific and specifically the medical
community. Knowing that his first book didn’t give adequate evidence for the
afterlife, he decided to let the stories speak for themselves rather than try
to sensationalize them with his own superlatives and dogmatic conclusions.
Instead, he determined to simply get the stories out there and start the
scientific process by delineating the typical elements of NDEs, hoping this
would inspire others to a more rigorous scientific study of NDEs. It worked. (46,81,100-103,118)

3)
Large scale clinical studies aren’t as conclusive
as one might think. For example, one study found that as much as 90 percent of
carefully conceived, rigorously controlled, large-scale medical studies are
eventually either overturned or extensively revised.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/questioning-the-results-of-medical-research
)
Dean Mobbs, coauthor of “There is nothing paranormal about near-death
experiences,” suggests in response to criticism of his article that NDE
researchers should use “gold standard” techniques like double blind studies
(“Response to Greyson et al.: there is nothing paranormal about near-death
experiences,”
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
, Sept. 2012, Vol. 16, no. 9,
446). Yet, double-blind studies aren’t always practical, even in medicine. For
example, to conduct a double-blind study to determine if open heart surgery is
effective, researchers would need two sets of patients with severe arterial
blockage. One set would be cut open and have a bypass performed. The other set would
be cut open but not have a bypass. Neither group would know who actually had
the bypass. Obviously, it’s not practical to do double-blind studies to test open-heart
surgeries. Other forms of evidence must be used in such cases.  

            The
meaning of “scientific evidence” shifts from field to field. “Scientific
evidence has no universally accepted definition but generally refers to
evidence
which serves
to either support or counter a
scientific
theory
or
hypothesis
. Such
evidence is generally expected to be
empirical
and properly
documented in accordance with
scientific method
such
as is applicable to the particular field of inquiry. Standards for evidence may
vary according to whether the field of inquiry is among the
natural sciences
or
social sciences
” (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_evidence
).

            The
following article describes how medical decisions should (and do) incorporate
legal evidence, although medicine often prides itself on being based upon entirely
scientific evidence. Medicine is “an art of probabilities, or at best, a
science of uncertainty. One can better practice medicine by using other
evidentiary standards in addition to the scientific. To employ only the
scientific standard of proof is inappropriate, if not impossible; furthermore,
as this review will show, its application in medicine is fraught with bias.”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/miller/on-evidence-medical-and-legal.pdf
- Donald W. Miller, Jr., M.D., Clifford G. Miller, Esq., On Evidence,
Medical and Legal,
Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons
Volume 10
Number 3 Fall (2005).

4) See John C. Lennox,
God’s Undertaker
(Oxford: Lion
Hudson, 2009), 32ff, on the difficulties of defining science and the scientific
method. Also, p. 38 concerning considering all available empirical evidence to
infer to the best explanation.
5) In science, “anecdotal evidence” has been variously defined as:

• "information
  that is not based on facts or careful study"
  
• "reports or
  observations of usually unscientific observers"
  
• "casual
  observations or indications rather than rigorous or scientific
  analysis"
  
• "information
  passed along by word-of-mouth but not documented scientifically"
  

See
a good discussion of “anecdotal” here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence
.
            Sartori distinguished her evidence from anecdotal:
“The fact that I was
working with these patients at the time they [the NDEs] occurred enhances their
authenticity. They were not anecdotal reports, but were elicited at the time,
or within a few days of occurrence.”
The Near Death Experiences of
Hospitalized Intensive Care Patients: A Five-Year Clinical Study
, (New
York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2008), 300.  
6)
Pim van Lommel,
Consciousness Beyond Life
(New York:
HarperCollins, 2010),
139,140,150-153.
7)
See, for example, the results of van Lommel’s prospective
study, utilizing a control group. Ibid., 149-153.  
8) Dr. Long found that of the NDErs who shared their stories
anonymously on his website, 8.5% said they had never shared the experience with
another person.
Evidence of the Afterlife
, Jeffrey Long (New York:
HarperOne, 2010), 35.
According to Sabom, “Many had been unable to
discuss it with their closest friends or relatives for fear of ridicule….”
Recollections
of Death
(New York: Harper & Row, 1982), 11.
9)
The Near Death Experiences of
Hospitalized Intensive Care Patients: A Five-Year Clinical Study
, 327.
 
10) As Cambridge Mathematician and Philosopher of Science John Lennox suggests,
some gaps science closes; others it opens. See his discussion in
God’s
Undertaker
(Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2009), 188-192.
11)
The Handbook of Near-death Experiences: Thirty
Years of Investigation
(Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, LLC.), 7.
 
12) Karl Jansen argues this in The Ketamine Model
of the Near-Death Experience,
Journal of Near-Death Studies
, 16 (1)
(1997), p. 5.
13) Raymond A. Moody,
Paranormal
(New York: HarperCollins,2012), 243,244.  
14) Ibid., 244-246.

Appendix
#5

1) Susan
Blackmore,
Dying to Live
(New York: Prometheus Books, 1993), 3.

2) Ibid.,
22,39,261.

3)
Ibid., 62, etc.

4) Ibid.,
244.

5) Ibid.,
113-135,262.

6) Ibid.,
49.

7) Ibid.
I appreciate that Blackmore typically expresses appropriate tentativeness,
rather than dogmatically proclaiming that she’s proven a scientific connection.
For example, “It implies that there may be a phase…. During this state they
might be able to hear what was going on….” (59) “From this evidence I would now
like to try to piece together an idea of which experiences should occur under
which conditions. The evidence is pitifully inadequate at the moment….” (62)
“It is certainly dangerous to speculate about specific mental processes on the
basis of global brain processes. However, bearing in mind this is pure
speculation, an interesting possibility arises.” (63) She also appropriately
mentions where her hypothesis needs further testing. Concerning her
explanations for the tunnel experience, she states, “As far as I know, this has
not been tested.” “This has never been tested….” (87) “This, too, awaits
testing.” (90) Concerning the life review, she notes that the main prediction
“would be hard to test directly,” but might be indirectly tested. (217)

8)
Janice Miner Holden, Bruce Greyson, Debbie James, editors,
The Handbook of
Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation
(Santa Barbara,
California: ABC-CLIO, LLC), chapter by Holden, Long and McClurg, 132,133.

9) Ibid.,
43,49.

10) Ibid.,
67-93.

11) Jeffrey
Long,
Evidence of the Afterlife
(New York: HarperOne, 2010), 9.

12) From
www.nderf.org
. One of the people I
interviewed described the tunnel as being multicolored, like the multicolored
breath mint Certs. Blackwell actually did her own survey in India to try to
find NDErs with tunnel experiences. But her survey has been criticized on two
grounds. First, the survey was published in an English paper that’s read
largely by westernized people. Secondly, upon closer inspection, what they
reported as tunnels may have not been like the tunnels reported in the West.
The
Handbook of Near-Death Experiences
, 140, 150-152. Sartori has an especially
good discussion on the tunnel experience and Blackmore’s arguments concerning
it – Penny Sartori,
The Near Death Experiences of Hospitalized Intensive
Care Patients: A Five-Year Clinical Study
, (New York: The Edwin Mellen
Press, 2008), 62-66.

13)
Dying
to Live
, 180.

14) Michael
Sabom,
Light & Death
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House,
1998),184.

15)
Dying
to Live
, 136-164.

16) Ibid.,
163. Blackmore continues to use this as a basis for explaining NDEs. Toward
the end of her book, she writes, “My conclusion is that the NDE brings about a
breakdown of the model of self along with the breakdown of the brain’s normal
processes. In this way it can cut right through the illusion that we are
separate selves. It becomes obvious that ‘I’ never did exist and so there is no
one to die.” (p. 259)

17)
See
Dying to Live
, chapter 7 and especially the conclusion on p. 164.

18) Ibid.,
224.

19)
Ibid., Chapter 11.

20) Ibid.,
242,243,253.

21)
If the NDE truly demonstrated a breakdown of the illusion of self, then I’d
predict that NDErs would report a lessening of importance of self. Yet, NDE
studies find the opposite effect. Sartori references H.J. Irwin, The Near-Death
Experience as a Dissociative Phenomenon: An Empirical Assessment.
Journal of
Near-Death Studies
, 12(2), 95-103 (1993), finding that the sense of
identity is heightened, not diminished. K. Ring found NDErs reporting an
increased sense of purpose and greater self-confidence. [
Heading Toward Omega:
In Search of Meaning of the Near-Death Experience
(New York: William Morrow,
1984) referenced in
The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences
, 43. Moody’s subjects
(
Life After Life,
90,93,96) reported a feeling of special importance or
destiny, the sense that they’ve received a special favor of God or fate, a
stronger assurance of life after death. They tend to lose their fear of death,
not because they believe the self never existed, but because of their “new or
strengthened belief in survival of bodily death.” Many believe in heaven and a
joyous reunion with their creator. They’re determined to find His will for
their lives. (
Life After Life
, 96;
The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences
,
45,46) See also
Reflections on Death
, 22 – “I was fully in control of my
mind” sounds more like
heightened
than
dissolved
identity.  
            Blackmore’s interpretation of the positive changes being due to the
breakdown of the illusion of self during the NDE isn’t borne out by the research
that suggests the experience “revealed to them a transcendent reality and
brought them face-to-face with a divine presence.” (
The Handbook of Near-Death
Experiences
, 57) “It is as though the creator of the universe has given
them a precious gift of life, and this life takes on special importance and is
endowed with a unique mission” (58).

22)
We could go further with this line of observations that cut against Blackmore’s
hypothesis. In what way can we say that Hitler was
wrong
to kill
innocent people? If we truly have no choice (as Blackmore believes), then there
isn’t a true right and wrong, there just
is
. If “I” don’t exist, then
why does she continue the book by using subjects like “we”? How can she
transition to the next chapter by saying “
we
need to understand the
mental models created by the dying brain” and “
we
have to ask what model
of self was being constructed at the time.” (emphasis mine) Unless I’ve
misunderstood Chapter Seven,
there is no “we.”
For if “I” and every
other “I” don’t exist, then there can be no “we” as a collection of individuals.
 And on what grounds should we trust our powers of reasoning if they’re merely
part of a fallible construct?