{"id":5680,"date":"2018-01-06T17:40:28","date_gmt":"2018-01-06T23:40:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tampaseo.expert\/focus\/?p=5680"},"modified":"2018-01-06T17:40:28","modified_gmt":"2018-01-06T23:40:28","slug":"into-the-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tampaseo.expert\/focus\/2018\/01\/06\/into-the-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Into the Light"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Trevor Major<\/strong>
\nJournalist William Cash relates the fascinating story of one Freddie Ayer.i<\/span>\u00a0In May of 1988, at the age of 77, Ayer came down with a serious case of pneumonia. He was admitted to hospital. A\u00a0few days later, his heart\u00a0stopped beating. A nurse was able to revive him,\u00a0and apparently,\u00a0the patient\u00a0suffered no ill effects.\u00a0Three months later, Ayer wrote an article\u00a0about his experience\u00a0titled, \u201cWhat I Saw When I Was Dead.\u201d\u00a0He\u00a0reports\u00a0seeing a bright light, and\u00a0becoming aware that this light \u201cwas responsible for the government of the universe.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>
\nHere is the kicker: Freddie Ayer is better known in all his books\u00a0and technical writings as A.J. Ayer\u2014one of the preeminent atheist philosophers of the twentieth century.\u00a0This was the same guy who, in an early phase of his\u00a0professional career,\u00a0dismissed as nonsense any sentence using the word \u201cGod.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>
\nAyer\u00a0confessed that the\u00a0experience \u201cslightly weakened\u201d his conviction that death will be the end of him, but it had not weakened his conviction that there is no God.\u00a0This is not what he told\u00a0Dr. Jeremy George, the attending physician, shortly after his recovery\u00a0from cardiac arrest.\u00a0On\u00a0Dr. George\u2019s account, Ayer said the following: \u201cI saw a Divine Being. I\u2019m afraid I\u2019m going to have to revise all my various books and opinions.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>
\nNone of\u00a0those revisions took place,\u00a0and the later essay is taken to be Ayer\u2019s official position.\u00a0Privately, there were changes. According to his wife,\u00a0Freddie\u00a0\u201cbecame so much nicer after he died,\u201d\u00a0and he spent a lot of time with\u00a0philosopher and Jesuit priest, Frederick Copleston.\u00a0<\/span>
\nAyer\u2019s\u00a0near-death\u00a0experience\u00a0(NDE) is not\u00a0unique.\u00a0More than\u00a013 million Americans claim to have had an NDE episode,\u00a0according to a Gallup Poll in 1991.\u00a0There is now an International Association for Near-Death Studies and a\u00a0Journal of Near<\/i>-Death Studies<\/i>. This is quite the cottage industry\u00a0in academia, as well as in the Christian publishing world,\u00a0with blockbuster titles such as\u00a0Heaven\u00a0<\/i>I<\/i>s for Real<\/i>\u00a0(2010), and\u00a0The Boy Who Came Back\u00a0<\/i>F<\/i>rom Heaven<\/i>\u00a0(2010).\u00a0<\/span>
\nOver the last few decades, psychologists, neuroscientists,\u00a0and other researchers have\u00a0examined\u00a0hundreds of cases\u00a0of NDEs\u00a0and have found a distinctive cluster of features. Not everyone experiences all these features in exactly this order, but most NDEs share the following:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. A realization that the body is near to death, or has died.\u00a0This\u00a0occurs,\u00a0not only in\u00a0the classic cases of cardiac arrest or\u00a0drowning, but also\u00a0in\u00a0cases\u00a0where\u00a0people are suffering from\u00a0chronic illnesses such as\u00a0cancer or cystic fibrosis.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. An experience of moving out of the body, and being able to see the body from above.\u00a0Subjects often report hearing conversations among family and medical staff.<\/li>\n
  3. An experience of moving beyond the earthly \u201cdeath\u201d scene to a totally different plane of existence. This is often where we hear accounts of people moving through a dark tunnel, or being guided by loved ones or spirit beings of some kind or another.<\/li>\n
  4. Seeing light at the end of the tunnel.\u00a0This often radiates from an individual.\u00a0People with a Christian background will identify this \u201cbeing of light\u201d with Jesus. Buddhists say they encounter Buddha. Hindus say they encounter one of their gods or goddesses. These beings will often\u00a0share some deep personal insights, or express some\u00a0grand \u201ctruths\u201d about the universe. Again, these revelations are\u00a0typically\u00a0consistent with the subject\u2019s worldview.<\/li>\n
  5. An instantaneous, panoramicreview of their lives.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  6. An option\u00a0to\u00a0stay in the light, or return to their earthly bodies.\u00a0Some\u00a0encounter\u00a0a barrier, and realize that they\u00a0have no choice but to return. This final phase is often accompanied by the impression thatthis is not their time to die, and that they have important, unfinished business\u00a0back on\u00a0earth.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    This\u00a0<\/i>I<\/i>s Your Brain on Death<\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    Near-death stories are often used to back up the claim that we have a soul that survives\u00a0the physical\u00a0death\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0body\u00a0and goes on to have a conscious existence in the afterlife. Naturally, skeptics see this as something that has to be explained away.\u00a0<\/span>
    \nSusan Blackmore argues that\u00a0a variety of\u00a0triggers, such as stress, fear, and lack of oxygen,\u00a0can bring about a\u00a0near-death experience.iii<\/span>\u00a0These triggers\u00a0can\u00a0cause\u00a0\u201cthe release of\u00a0pleasure-inducing endorphins, and can set off random neural activity in various parts of the brain.\u201d\u00a0Similar activity has been observed in the brains of people taking\u00a0hallucinogenic drugs.\u00a0<\/span>
    \nIronically,\u00a0accounts that try to reduce mental events to physical events\u00a0lack\u00a0the\u00a0one thing\u00a0that\u00a0skeptics value\u00a0the most, namely,\u00a0empirical evidence.\u00a0\u00a0If anything, empirical studies show that NDEs cannot be\u00a0described completely in terms of\u00a0brain chemistry.\u00a0<\/span>
    \nIn the Netherlands, researchers followed the progress of over 300 patients who were successfully resuscitated after cardiac arrest.iv<\/span>\u00a0Less than a fifth of the patients reported\u00a0some sort of NDE.\u00a0Their experiences\u00a0were\u00a0not readily explained by\u00a0medication\u00a0or\u00a0the length of time they were\u00a0unconscious.\u00a0<\/span>
    \nIf NDEs have a completely physical explanation, then we should expect similar experiences under similar conditions, but only a few of the\u00a0Dutch\u00a0survivors\u00a0reported\u00a0having an\u00a0NDE.\u00a0Even more striking, survivors who\u00a0had an NDE\u00a0would often experience positive life changes. We do not see the same \u201cafter-death\u201d effects in other survivors, or in people who have experienced drug-induced hallucinations. There\u00a0is\u00a0something profound and unique about NDEs that cannot be explained away by physiology and chemistry.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    What Do We Learn?<\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    First, NDEs throw a\u00a0wrench in\u00a0the\u00a0assumptions\u00a0of\u00a0reductive\u00a0materialism.\u00a0We fail to see a one-to-one match up between, say, the physical state of an oxygen-starved brain, and the mental state of a patient who\u00a0thinks\u00a0he\u00a0saw Peter at the Pearly Gates.\u00a0Human consciousness\u00a0constantly defies explanation in completely physical terms.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>
    \nSecond,\u00a0NDEs throw a wrench in the\u00a0assumptions\u00a0of the\u00a0euthanasia\u00a0movement.\u00a0NDEs are remarkable because they\u00a0seem to take\u00a0place when there is no\u00a0measurable\u00a0brain activity\u00a0(as shown\u00a0by a\u00a0flat EEG).v<\/span>\u00a0The pro-death\u00a0people would love us to\u00a0step back\u00a0at this point and say, \u201cThat\u2019s\u00a0it. Game over. Pull the plug.\u201d\u00a0But\u00a0clearly,\u00a0a lot is happening in the\u00a0first few minutes of clinical death.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>
    \nAnd third, to end on\u00a0a\u00a0somewhat negative note, NDEs are not a\u00a0compelling\u00a0argument for\u00a0Heaven\u2019s existence.\u00a0Arguments from religious experience are highly subjective.\u00a0Someone can tell me that she died, went through a tunnel, saw God, and felt\u00a0an overwhelming sense of\u00a0love and acceptance. She can tell me that this\u00a0experience\u00a0changed her life for the better.\u00a0I can hear all\u00a0of that, and I\u00a0can\u00a0rejoice\u00a0with her,\u00a0but I cannot build my faith on her experience.\u00a0If she claims to have received extraordinary knowledge, such as meeting relatives she (thought she) never knew existed, I can hardly verify those claims for myself.\u00a0<\/span>
    \nThe\u00a0objective\u00a0evidence to ground\u00a0our\u00a0faith can be\u00a0found in abundance elsewhere. Paul\u00a0did not shy away from offering his personal testimony to Agrippa and Festus, but he never expected them to\u00a0take his word on it.\u00a0The central event of the Christian faith, he reminded them, \u201chas\u00a0not been done in a corner\u201d (Acts 26:26).\u00a0NDEs happen in a fascinating corner of the human mind;\u00a0but, for the majority of us, it will always be someone else\u2019s corner.\u00a0<\/span>
    \nFurther, NDEs are colored by a person\u2019s worldview.\u00a0Ayer\u2019s NDE included a conversation about the laws of nature, but this is hardly surprising:\u00a0The atheist spent a lot of\u00a0his career\u00a0thinking about the philosophy of science.\u00a0Some NDE reports are simply inconsistent with Biblical theism.\u00a0<\/span>
    \nIn the end, we can acknowledge that\u00a0NDEs\u00a0have a profound effect on people\u2019s lives.\u00a0They cannot be ignored.\u00a0At the same time, they cannot provide us with objective\u00a0evidence of an afterlife,\u00a0Heaven, or the existence of God.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    By Trevor Major Journalist William Cash relates the fascinating story of one Freddie Ayer.i\u00a0In May of 1988, at the age of 77, Ayer came down with a serious case of pneumonia. He was admitted to hospital. A\u00a0few days later, his heart\u00a0stopped beating. A nurse was able to revive him,\u00a0and apparently,\u00a0the patient\u00a0suffered no ill effects.\u00a0Three months […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[419,277,1051,1289,1298,1236],"class_list":["post-5680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-think-excerpts","tag-death","tag-existence-of-god","tag-feature","tag-february-2013","tag-near-death-experience","tag-trevor-major","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\nInto the Light - Focus Press<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/tampaseo.expert\/focus\/2018\/01\/06\/into-the-light\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Into the Light - Focus Press\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Trevor Major Journalist William Cash relates the fascinating story of one Freddie Ayer.i\u00a0In May of 1988, at the age of 77, Ayer came down with a serious case of pneumonia. 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