Atheism and the near death experience

Those familiar with my work know that I’m fascinated by certain aspects of the near death experience.

However, all NDEs are not created equal.

Some reveal more valuable information that other NDEs. And some accounts are fraudulent, of course.

No matter what information a specific account may contain,  my atheist friends refuse to believe them — they simply can’t afford to believe any of them could be true, because the only thing that could possibly continue to exist after the death of these material bodies is an immortal soul.

Instead, the atheist will vehemently protest that every NDE is nothing more than a pleasant  hallucination produced by the human brain in order to ease the transition from life into death.

According to them, the NDE is evolution’s contribution to death to make the experience slightly less unpleasant. But this creates a problem for NDE claims where the person describes a totally miserable experience in hell — what are we to make of those particular “anecdotes” of dreadful hallucinations?

If NDEs are nothing but hallucinations, why would some be pleasant and others unpleasant? Perhaps it is possible not every NDE account is a hallucination, or a lie. In fact, there is a category of NDE phenomena that offers clear and confirmable evidence that the physical brain and spiritual mind can literally separate, called corroborated veridical NDE accounts.

This phenomena suggests that the mind can actually learn accurate information apart from the physical brain — information that can later be independently investigated and either corroborated or debunked by third-party observers.

One of the most famous cases of corroborated veridical NDE information (and a personal favorite of mine) comes from a woman named Pam Reynolds, as she underwent a special procedure called Operation Standstill to remove an aneurysm at the base of her brain.

Neurosurgeon Dr. Robert Spetzler described the preparations for Operation Standstill (beginning at 5:04 in the video) as follows:

“Prior to the operation starting, a lot of activity goes on. The patient is put to sleep. The eyes are taped shut. There are little clicking devices put in each ear in order to monitor the brain. The patient is then completely covered. The only thing that is really exposed is the area where we work.”

Remarkably, under those well-documented conditions, Pam claimed to accurately recall specific details of a conversation between her cardio-vascular surgeon and Dr. Spetzler. Pam also accurately described the surgical equipment that Dr. Spetzler acknowledged had not been opened until all the preparations had been made.

Dr. Spetzler also said in the interview,

“I don’t think that the observations she made were based on what she experienced as she went into the operating room theatre. They were just not available to her. For example, the drill and so on — those things are all covered up. They’re not visible. They were inside their packages.  You really don’t begin to open until the patient is completely asleep so that you maintain a sterile environment.”

Why are Dr. Spetzler’s observations so important? He was there, in the room, when these events allegedly took place.

Yet when I mentioned Pam’s story again in my article about the so-called “God helmet“, one particular critic got very upset and posted several long, rambling, and very angry comments that challenged the veracity of the information reported in my article.

With literally no evidence to support his claim, this person audaciously determined that Pam must have been suffering from a case of anesthesia awareness, even though he wasn’t there to witness the events. This person practically accused Dr. Spetzler of committing medical malpractice with no evidence to support his claim, in his desperate zeal to convince me that the details I reported about her story were wrong.

I’m not going to keep arguing about Pam’s case with this person, though. I feel no need to prove to him the story is true. Quite frankly, I don’t need this particular evidence to be true. I do believe it is true, but I confess that I don’t have any special attachment to Pam’s story — I’ve never even met the woman. Therefore, I’m not desperate to prove the allegedly corroborated and veridical evidence settles this issue once and forever. I have no vested interest in that one particular case. Her story is but one of many incidents of corroborated veridical NDE information – admittedly one of the better examples, simply because of the medical instrumentation carefully monitoring her condition.

But her story is far from the only example. There are thousands, perhaps even millions of other accounts that contain new memories that may potentially be investigated and confirmed to be true. I have no interest in arguing incessantly with one persistent critic about Pam’s case.

The NDEs of Colton Burpo and Michaela Roser provide equally compelling examples of corroborated, veridical NDE information — Colton allegedly learned of a sister who died in his mother’s womb, while Michaela overheard and accurately remembered a conversation her family had in the hospital cafeteria while she was undergoing emergency surgery. And if only one of these claims of new knowledge learned during a near death experience can be successfully corroborated, then we can reasonably conclude that solid scientific evidence exists for the immaterial soul.

The problem for my atheist critic is that every alleged account of corroborated veridical NDE information must be successfully debunked, or strict materialism (the prevalent worldview for atheism) will have been proven false.

In contrast, if the details provided in only one of these events can be successfully confirmed, it will have proven that the mind and brain truly do separate at the moment the brain dies, while the mind apparently continues to live.

Not every NDE offers no new and unique evidence that could be independently investigated and verified, of course.

For example, medical records can prove this 16 year-old boy named Mike had a heart attack in school, but his experience contained no claims of new information learned while the mind was possibly separated from the brain. At most, Mike’s story should be classified as nothing greater than an interesting but unverified anecdote.

In fact, the most interesting aspect of Mike’s alleged experience with his deceased grandmother was that she told him that he had a purpose for his life, and his subsequent transformation from a materialist to a more spiritual person.

Mike says, “What I care about now is pretty much everything that you can’t really buy.”

His mother Karen seemed to back up Mike’s claims that he became less materialistic after his near death experience, saying, “I think he sees the world differently. I think he lives each day to the fullest, because he might not be here tomorrow.”

This is true for anyone reading this article. Tomorrow is not guaranteed.

My question for the atheist is this: even if you don’t believe that Mike’s experience was real, why would you want to try to deprive people like him of the positive changes that come in their lives as a result?

Even if you believe Mike’s memory is nothing but a pleasant delusion, why would you work so hard to rob him of the joy that his newfound belief in eternity gives him?

Does the thought of someone else being happy really make the typical atheist that miserable?