Sam Parnia practices resuscitation medicine. In other words, he helps bring people back from the dead — and some return with stories. Their tales could help save lives, and even challenge traditional scientific ideas about the nature of consciousness.
Commenting on AC Grayling’s new book, The God Argument (due to be published at the end of this month), Damon Linker in The Week, after saying, without a shred of evidence, that godlessness is not umabiguously good for human beings (it could of course be argued that nothing is “unambiguously” good for human beings), goes on to say this:
There are some really thoughtful and profound sentiments in this article. Even CS Lewis makes a welcome contribution. More atheists should ponder as deeply as Mr.MacDonald.
“We are asked to justify these frightful passages, these infamous laws of war, because the Bible is the word of God. As a matter of fact, there never was, and there never can be, an argument even tending to prove the inspiration of any book whatever. In the absence of positive evidence, analogy and experience, argument is simply impossible, and at the very best, can amount only to a useless agitation of the air. The instant we admit that a book is too sacred to be doubted, or even reasoned about, we are mental serfs. It is infinitely absurd to suppose that a god would Address a communication to intelligent beings, and yet make it a crime, to be punished in eternal flames, for them to use their intelligence for the purpose of understanding his communication. If we have the right to use our reason, we certainly have the right to act in accordance with it, and no god can have the right to punish us for such action.
Last night, my 13-year-old daughter, Sydney, strolled into the bedroom and plopped herself on the bed and said, “So, Dad, there was sort of an awkward moment at lunch today. You know my friend, Sara? Well, we were at lunch and the topic of religion came up. People were talking about Heaven and Hell, who God sends to Hell, and Sara, who is a fundamentalist, said that her church taught her that people who don’t believe in God go to Hell. It was kind of awkward, because I was sitting there thinking, ‘Well, then I guess, according to her, I am going to Hell,’ I didn’t say anything because I did not want to make her feel bad. It was no big deal, since I don’t believe in the afterlife. But it was a little bit uncomfortable.”
According to a Yahoo poll, 74% of the people who participated believe heaven exists. Now, I’m not going to talk about this from a neuroscientific perspective; the much more eloquent and qualified Sam Harris has already done that. However, I will speak of this from another perspective—a human perspective. Dr. Eben Alexander has two sons and a wife—plenty good reason to fabricate such a story with money in mind. Any good father would think of his family after a near-death experience. Yes, he’s a successful neurosurgeon; surely he doesn’t need the money…right? Neurosurgeons earn anywhere between 250,000 and 700,000 annually. That may sound like a lot, but had he passed away, they would have likely received his pension, annuity, etc. Perhaps that creeps over a million or so, but when someone faces death, what may seem like enough isn’t enough. I find it more probable that he invented this story in order to write a book and profit off the gullibility of religious zealots—specifically Christians. However, there’s another problem with his story:
Although I considered myself a faithful Christian, I was so more in name than in actual belief. I didn’t begrudge those who wanted to believe that Jesus was more than simply a good man who had suffered at the hands of the world. I sympathized deeply with those who wanted to believe that there was a God somewhere out there who loved us unconditionally. In fact, I envied such people the security that those beliefs no doubt provided. But as a scientist, I simply knew better than to believe them myself.
A lukewarm Christian? A skeptic? One can’t be too certain after reading that. If what he’s saying is true, how did he enter heaven? Doesn’t god spit out the lukewarm (Revelation 3:16)? Aren’t them who disown Jesus disowned before the father and his angels (Luke 12:8,9)? What about his vision? He was on a butterfly wing. He saw arcs of light and called them “angels”. Why didn’t he see cherubim (also known as the four living creatures) (Ezekiel 1:5-10; Revelation 4:8) and seraphim (Isaiah 6:2-4)? Why didn’t he see thrones? Why didn’t he see the 24 elders (Revelation 4)? What about the son sitting at the right hand of the father? His version of heaven doesn’t even sound like the Christian version—like the versions purportedly put forth by Isaiah, Ezekiel and John! Yet they believe him. Here’s what I gather from all of this: 1) a man will do anything to ensure that his family is secure 2) people forget theology because they’re so desperate for an afterlife and proof of its existence. Does heaven exist? He may want it to exist; you may want that too, but the fact remains, heaven is the epitome of wishful thinking.
Once upon a time, a neurosurgeon named Eben Alexander contracted a bad case of bacterial meningitis and fell into a coma. While immobile in his hospital bed, he experienced visions of such intense beauty that they changed everything—not just for him, but for all of us, and for science as a whole. According to Newsweek, Alexander’s experience proves that consciousness is independent of the brain, that death is an illusion, and that an eternity of perfect splendor awaits us beyond the grave—complete with the usual angels, clouds, and departed relatives, but also butterflies and beautiful girls in peasant dress. Our current understanding of the mind “now lies broken at our feet”—for, as the doctor writes, “What happened to me destroyed it, and I intend to spend the rest of my life investigating the true nature of consciousness and making the fact that we are more, much more, than our physical brains as clear as I can, both to my fellow scientists and to people at large.”
Philosophy goes where hard science can’t, or won’t. Philosophers have a license to speculate about everything from metaphysics to morality, and this means they can shed light on some of the basic questions of existence. The bad news? These are questions that may always lay just beyond the limits of our comprehension. Here are eight mysteries of philosophy that we’ll probably never resolve.
