D'Souza's Life After Death: The Review Thread!

[Maia]

Yes! As promised, this is the review thread of that new book. I warn y'all... this is LLLOOONNNGGGGGG. But it's still shorter than reading the book.



Basically, this book, Life After Death: The Evidence, is anything but. You may search from cover to cover, but no evidence will you find. Worse, there's really no attempt at presenting evidence, either. However, it's apparent that D'Souza has at least paid attention and taken notes when he's debated atheists, because the book does show a lot of sneaky debate tricks. Also, this is a ripoff—or, to be nice, a response to—the John Shelby Spong book, Eternal Life: A New Vision, Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell. Even the cover is almost the same! I may review Spong's book soon.

Anyway, first, we get the foreword by Rick Warren, which is about what you’d expect (complete with quotes like “this is also a book for genuine seekers of the truth.”
The introduction is really what convinced me that without having read Spong, D’Souza’s never would have decided to write this book, because he covers so much of what Spong did in his introduction and first chapter. He notes that people in our culture do not deal honestly with death, that we do not know how to handle the subject, that we have reached a point where we must find a better way, and that religion has always dealt with the subject of death in a particular way. But here, of course, is where he and Spong so radically part ways, because D’Souza takes off on a panegyric to good old-time religion, and that it’s all the fault of the atheists and their sinister influence over American (and European) culture. But I do have to say this for him: he’s really quite honest about what he plans to do in this book. D’Souza states clearly that he will use a mainly secular vocabulary in order to win over undecided “seekers and fencesitters.’ It’s worth quoting this passage in its entirety to understand what he himself frankly admits he’s going to do for the next 269 pages:

Quote:

For the Christian cage fighter, it’s fun to take on your opponent with one hand tied behind your back. I do this here by giving up all claims to biblical truth or revelation. This is not because I reject all such forms of truth; far from it. Rather, I want to engage atheism and reductive materialism on their own terms, and to beat them at their own game.

D’Souza then states that he will present three arguments for life after death: “one from neuroscience, one from philosophy, and one from morality.” Quite honestly, however, it sounds like D’Souza just finished admitting that any secular argument he made from this point on would be a trick, a bait and switch, meant to lull people into agreeing with religious ideas before they realize what they’re doing. But we will see.

The second chapter, entitled “Vendors of Disbelief: Atheist False Advertising”, is meant to “show the pretensions of the atheist claim to knowledge.” Basically, D’Souza makes the argument that whether atheists are talking about proof for a lack of life after death or religious believers are claiming proof for the same, it is a matter of faith for each group. He goes on to say that the believers’ faith is more plausible because it comes from “a divine text”. (The idea of “giving up all claims to biblical truth or revelation” didn’t make it very far; this is exactly seven pages after that quote!) Also, D’Souza seems to be arguing that life after death (which is clearly being bundled up with religious ideas in general here; I don’t care what claims the author may make to the contrary) should be regarded as a possibility because it is philosophically reasonable, and if anybody wants to negotiated their way through that tortured maze, it’s on page 29 of the book.

Next, D’Souza very briefly takes on the various psychodynamically oriented grounds for human ideas about the afterlife such as “wish fulfillment”. D’Souza seems to think he has dealt with it by quoting Steven Pinker’s statement that wish fulfillment can’t be squared with natural selection very well. Whether this is an accurate summary of what Pinker actually said or not, I don’t know, but this represents a much more interesting area, and I would like to have seen much more time spent on it, (which Spong actually did do.) However, the way the author treats this subject is a good lead-in to the next chapter.

The reason is that in Chapter Three, “A Universal Longing, Two Types of Immortality”, we can really see D’Souza’s main tactics coming to the fore.

1.) He presents his view as the only reasonable one, supported by all evidence, tradition, and history, and yet somehow vulnerable to damage or destruction by a small, malicious group (atheists) that is trying to spread its sinister influence over all of civilization. In other words, all of reality is divided into good and bad, “us” and “them”. The only difference is that the definition of “us” and “them” is subtler and more nuanced than it ordinarily would be in a polemical work, because, as D’Souza said in the introduction, the book is aimed so much at the undecided group, or perhaps not at a group which is actually so much undecided as it is unwilling to accept Christian ideas without being able to dress them up in reasonable language. (Here, D’Souza argues that all world religions have universally believed in the afterlife, and that the godless secularists are the only dissenters.)

2.) He even makes what looks like a brief “devil’s advocate” argument or making gracious concessions to his opponents (stating that atheists do seem to have a point that must be answered when they ask how anyone knows that their religion is right and all the others are wrong.)

3.) However, he then goes on to use a tactic C.S. Lewis was fond of dragging out over and over again: demolishing a particular argument step by step so that his argument seems perfectly persuasive by the end of the entire thing—but for anyone who really wants to trace it back all the way, it’s not hard to figure out where it went wrong. (Here, he presents the atheist supposition as being that different religions’ “competing claims cancel each other out”, and his answer at this point as being the result of “testing a set of atheist claims about the religions of the world against the empirical reality of what the religions of the world actually believe.”

4.) He always makes a slip which reveals that he is essentially taking 269 pages to tell a begging-the-question sort of shaggy dog story, where the conclusion has already been reached and is present at each stage of the argument before being revealed again at the end. (Here, it’s when he says “we are not doing comparative religions, we are not trying to affirm religions diversity”.

Chapter Four:
View From the Edge: Exploring Near-Death Experiences
This is the chapter, more than any other, which really gives the whole thing away. If there were any doubt that D’Souza had zero interest in anything besides winning converts to Christianity from the fence-sitters by writing this book, this chapter would flatten them all by itself. This was the one which convinced me that, as incredible as it sounds, D’Souza wasn’t really interested in convincing people of life after death with this book. That’s not why he wrote it. How can this be, and why would this chapter tend to make anyone think that?

First of all, a book with a title like Life After Death: The Evidence. What would you think it should contain. How about… an attempt at presenting actual evidence? And what would constitute evidence of life after death? It wouldn’t be philosophical arguments about what Plato and Schopenhauer believed or five thousand years of what Buddhists and Hindus and Jews and Christians believed, rants about evil, snarky atheists and their sinister influence on American culture, musings on what Christopher Hitchens would encounter in hell, or weird New-Agey versions of what Roger Penrose supposedly wrote about quantum physics and consciousness, and it definitely wouldn’t be a sudden descent into the same old evangelical nonsense in the last chapter of the book (which is exactly what we get.) But D’Souza first spends several pages yapping away about weird reincarnation ideas, complete with Deepak Chopra quotes about children supposedly remembering past lives. Quite some time later, he finally does get to NDE’s, but the way in which he writes about them is oddly lackluster and lazy. He relies almost completely on anecdotes and reports about Americans’ beliefs about NDE’s, then quickly moves to religious objections to them, which I think reveals much more about what’s really going on here. He spends a surprising amount of time on really bad “Christian” NDE research which dwells on the “negative NDE’s” of people who supposedly went to hell, assuring readers that “Christians need not worry that NDE’s somehow undermine mainstream religious beliefs” and that “NDE’s seem to produce a stronger faith and a higher level of commitment to traditional religious practice” (not true!) He then spends the rest of the chapter on refuting criticisms of NDE’s, which is reasonably well done, but what surprised me so much about this chapter was the things that were totally left out. Pim van Lommel’s fascinating work received one sentence, for instance. And you’d never know from reading this that NDE’s have been thoroughly defined as a neurobiological event, and that a standard test (Greyson’s NDE Scale) differentiates them from other neurological events such as organic brain syndrome. I think the reason is that the real research on NDE’s says absolutely nothing about their nature, or whether or not they somehow constitute proof that consciousness survives bodily death, much less that a Christian concept of an afterlife exists. This research certainly would not fit into D’Souza’s agenda in this book!


Chapter Five: The Physics of Immortality: Multiple Universes and Unseen Realms.
D’Souza talks about quantum physics for the first time here, but he clearly understands as much about them as I do (not a whole lot), and his scientific interests clearly exist for a very specific reason. Christian ideas about heaven and hell “beyond space and time” and resurrection of the body are more important than anything else, and D’Souza twists around scientific theories to come up with possible scenarios where these things can exist. So the point of talking about multiple universes is that heaven and hell can exist in them. Modern physics can be made to support “the Christian concept of eternity” and the Anthropic Principle.

Chapter Six: Undeniable Teleology: The Plot of Evolution
I think that D’Souza was itching to put this chapter a lot earlier, but he realized that if he did, the real nature of his motives in this entire argument would be a lot more obvious. It’s becoming more and more clear that the masks of secularism are dropping fast. Here, D’Souza argues that “nature operates according to a plan” because the earth was obviously fine-tuned for human life, and argues against “accidental” evolution, making a play for intelligent design.When he states “the mind may have arisen out of the material, but it is manifestly material”, it’s unfortunate, because the next couple of chapters could have been very interesting without this setup.

In chapter seven, “The Spiritual Brain, Finding the Soul Within the Body”, I came the closest to agreeing with the points that D’Souza was making, and he does make some very good points here. He acknowledges that thoughts, feelings, perceptions, etc., are clearly caused and mediated by physical processes in the brain, but he severely criticizes theoretical concepts such as reductive materialism, functionalism, identity, and eliminative materialism when they are used as attempts to deny human consciousness and mental states. This criticism, I think, is quite honestly fair enough as far as it goes (especially for eliminative materialism.) Materialist philosophies are much more useful in other fields (economy, political history, art criticism) than in the philosophy of consciousness. Not that D’Souza stops there, though, but rather states that this criticism has negated any attempt to explain mental states in physical terms. It hasn’t, because we’re talking about two different things, science and philosophy. And his argument hasn’t proven dualism as a stance on consciousness either.

But yes, I think it’s negated the attempt to explain consciousness away, which is not the same thing. Subjective mental states cannot be “explained away” by identifying their causes, this is a mistake that some people do make, and any attempts to do so are really quite bizarre (you do have to wonder about Paul and Patricia Churchland’s sanity sometimes.) However, this isn’t a distinction that D’Souza understands, either. (Also, I’ll admit that I don’t like Daniel Dennett very much in this context because of his arguments about adaptavism. I really like Stephen Jay Gould, Dennett has been too willing to make a strawman out of Gould’s arguments, and I have very little time for “evolutionary psychology,” a field which has always made Freud’s work look like the height of the rigorous scientific method.)

So then we come to Chapter Eight, The Immaterial Self: How Consciousness Can Survive Death, which sort of slops over and runs into chapter nine. D’Souza argues philosophy elegantly if rather speciously, but he falls apart completely when it comes to neurobiology. He points out that cognitive activity can change the brain, although his examples of how this happens are pretty dreadful and incorrect in their details (especially when it comes to Jeffrey Schwarz, who is my least favorite researcher and writer on the subject of obsessive-compulsive disorder by far. D’Souza actually gives Schwarz credit for developing “cognitive therapy”, which must come as quite a surprise to Dr. Aaron Beck, the actual pioneer of cognitive-behavioral therapy. He then goes on to give Schwarz credit for practically inventing the idea that the brain is capable of considerable plasticity throughout the life cycle. Surprisingly, he didn’t finish up by crediting Schwarz for the invention of modern psychiatry. This is all so breathtakingly dumb that it’s really kind of hard to believe.) There is absolutely no reason at all to believe that any of this has anything to do with quantum changes in consciousness, but sure enough, it comes up again.

D’Souza would do a lot better to stick to his next argument about the nature of consciousness—namely, that any reductionistic attempt to “explain it away” is ultimately doomed, because such attempts themselves depend upon the very quality that is putatively illusory and are simply impossible without it. But he spends very little time on this idea—surprisingly little, in fact—and I think it’s because there’s nothing intrinsically religious about it at all. There’s nothing that leads to the necessity of any type of God, so D’Souza abandons it and spends the rest of the chapter on the concept of free will. He clearly believes in its existence, he rejects materialist arguments against it, and he does make some very good arguments about the tautological nature of attempts to refute it. The problem, however, is that all of this effort is not neutral; is in the service of only one end: to support his ideas about “morality” and the way in which it defines the human soul.

When D’Souza moves on to the ninth chapter, he “locates an eternal realm that is beyond physical law” through analyzing the ideas of Kant, Schopenhauer, and Berkeley. If this sounds like a weird use of logic, it should, because D’Souza actually seems to think that he demolishes the entire idea of empirical realism—of the belief that a real and physical world exists outside of our own senses—by listing philosophical systems that have been opposed to it. I suppose that in a bizarre way this does make sense, since D’Souza’s entire argument seems to be that ultimate reality cannot be known and that everything is subjective, but he doesn’t seem to understand that he is really headed off the deep end of dualism here. Kant’s idea that a “real world” and an unseen “noumenal realm” exist is interesting. But not only is it not proof that it’s the reason why human beings help each other and show compassion and love, it’s definitely not proof that we’re all constructed to have a particular kind of “morality”, and that’s exactly where D’Souza is headed. If anything, this is an argument which itself denies free will, and D’Souza doesn’t seem to understand this at all. I think that materialist philosophies in any field do exist for a very good reason, and that ultimately it’s to bring people up short when they range too far into totally ungrounded speculation and bring them back to basic common sense, to what can be known according to empirical reasoning and the scientific method, and that’s very much what is needed here.

Well, on we go to chapter ten, The Impartial Spectator: Eternity and Cosmic Justice. D’Souza states that he’s presented two “proofs of life after death, one from neuroscience and another from philosophy”, which makes me wonder if his editor was on drugs that day, because he certainly hasn’t done either one (although he’s failed a lot more spectacularly at the first). The third proof is supposed to be the “presuppositional argument”. As D’Souza explains it, the fact that human beings “espouse goodness and justice even when the world is evil and unjust” can only be explained by the idea that there is an afterlife where everything will be evened out, and he still denies any claim that this necessitates the presence of any God, much less a “God of the gaps.”(Of course, he then immediately goes on to argue that the mere presence of “gaps” is what drives the process of scientific discovery.) D’Souza then criticizes the “selfish gene” theory and argues that the only way that genuinely altruistic behavior in its full human context makes any sense is if human existence continues into an afterlife. In and of itself, it’s an elegant argument and maybe the best use of reasoning in the entire book. If selfish genes are our evolutionary heritage, all well and good, but then why does anybody struggle to overcome them? Why be altruistic instead of only putting energy into appearing this way, particularly in situations where there’s no benefit in it for us? Why do I work twelve hours a day with Alzheimer’s patients who don’t remember me the next day for a salary so low it’s a joke? The problem is that there are many possible answers to these questions, and D’Souza’s answer, is, yet again, slanted to reach a very specific supposition, which is very much a religious one. D’Souza doesn’t reveal this quite yet, but he’s coming closer and closer.

In Chapter Eleven, Good for Society: The Transcendent Roots of Secular Values, D’Souza really starts to tip his hand. Essentially, he argues that Christianity has done wonderful things for society throughout all of history, and that this is why we should believe in its teachings, which include eternal life, and besides, the evil atheist communists might come back and murder millions of people any minute now. A five-year-old could see that this isn’t a logical argument, but the deeper D’Souza starts to dive into specifically religious ideas, the more illogical he starts to become. In Chapter Twelve, Good for You, The Practical Benefits of Belief, he really just presents Pascal’s Wager very thinly dressed up in new clothes. We should believe in life after death because so many other people have believed in it, so who are we to say they’re wrong, it’ll make us feel better, it’ll infuse our lives with a sense of purpose, it gives us a reason to behave morally and to teach our children to do the same (as opposed to atheists, who “seek hedonistic escape from the demands of morality), and it makes us better people (see, there are even studies proving it!)

Well, then comes Chapter Thirteen, Life Everlasting, Eternity Right Now, where D’Souza finally lays all the cards out on the table as he’s been itching to do all along. This is where he reviews his case, claiming he’s proven life after death through evidence on NDE’s, quantum physics (because of ‘realms beyond the universe” that could contain heaven and hell), intelligent design, neuroscience (he just has to be kidding here), arguments about consciousness and free will, philosophical arguments that refute empirical realism and carve out a “noumenal” world where we can continue to live on after we die, the explanation of human “morality” as a sort of evolutionary adaptation to the afterlife, and finally a practical argument that we should all believe in immortality because it makes out lives better. And then… (you knew THIS was coming…)

D’Souza triumphantly states that “someone actually died and came back to life”, and that this someone was Jesus Christ. Bad arguments biblical criticism ensue; they try to establish the Resurrection as historical fact, and this is presented as “final proof” of life after death. It’s finally clear that this is all that the entire book has been leading up to, and everything else has really been nothing but window dressing. This, I think, is why the only sections that actually could have presented anything like proof of consciousness surviving death (not “would have” but “could have”, of course)—the ones on near-death experiences and neurobiology—were so short, horribly researched and written, uninspired, and uninteresting. D’Souza couldn’t have cared less about any evidence; in fact, I think that real evidence was the last thing he wanted to find or to present. All he ever wanted to do was to get to: “Christ wants us to acknowledge that we are sinners and to accept God’s grace by way of his sacrifice on the cross.” He was longing to get to the part where he’d be able to describe a literal heaven and hell (which he does lovingly, including his fond wishes that Christopher Hitchens will end up there, complete with a graduate student eternally pestering him.)

All in all, I seriously wonder if in the deepest and most unexamined recesses of his mind, D’Souza himself believes in a literal afterlife. I don’t doubt that he firmly believes in Christianity, and that some of the reasons are the very pragmatic ones he outlined in Chapter Eleven. Ultimately, religion is the best means of attempting to control human behavior during this life—as this book makes abundantly clear.

[PixyMisa]

On that natural selection bit: Natural selection will only act on beliefs of life after death if people actually act according to those beliefs. People don't. This may, of course, be because everyone who did act according to those beliefs has already been erased from the gene pool.

[Maia]

Originally Posted by PixyMisa

On that natural selection bit: Natural selection will only act on beliefs of life after death if people actually act according to those beliefs. People don't. This may, of course, be because everyone who did act according to those beliefs has already been erased from the gene pool.

That could be. I'm not completely sure what you mean, though. I hope the sheer length of the first post isn't going to put everybody off... I did have fun analyzing this book. One of the main things I got out of it was that I honestly don't think D'Souza knows or cares the first thing about the relationship between quantum physics and consciousness; he's just trying to find a way to place heaven and hell in literal physical space. :P

[tsig]

Originally Posted by Maia

That could be. I'm not completely sure what you mean, though. I hope the sheer length of the first post isn't going to put everybody off... I did have fun analyzing this book. One of the main things I got out of it was that I honestly don't think D'Souza knows or cares the first thing about the relationship between quantum physics and consciousness; he's just trying to find a way to place heaven and hell in literal physical space. :P

Thanks for the work.

I think you're right that he only uses science terms to obscure the fact that this is just another book of Christian apologetics.

[PixyMisa]

Originally Posted by Maia

That could be. I'm not completely sure what you mean, though. I hope the sheer length of the first post isn't going to put everybody off... I did have fun analyzing this book. One of the main things I got out of it was that I honestly don't think D'Souza knows or cares the first thing about the relationship between quantum physics and consciousness; he's just trying to find a way to place heaven and hell in literal physical space. :P

Well, the argument seems to be that if life after death were wish fulfilment rather than reality, natural selection would eliminate it. But natural selection only acts on externalities. If you believe in life after death, but run away from the saber-tooth tiger all the same, then natural selection and your belief are both irrelevant.

If you believe in life after death and poke the saber-tooth with a pointy stick, your genes don't make it to the next generation. So it's not the unsupported belief itself that's selected against, but the tendency to act upon unsupported beliefs.

[Maia]

Thanks tsig!

Originally Posted by PixyMisa

Well, the argument seems to be that if life after death were wish fulfilment rather than reality, natural selection would eliminate it. But natural selection only acts on externalities. If you believe in life after death, but run away from the saber-tooth tiger all the same, then natural selection and your belief are both irrelevant.

I get it now.

This part of D'Souza's argument was from Chapter 10 (gets book and flips through it.)He was arguing that "the voice of morality" in human beings exists because it's the natural standard in the heavenly realm, but that we frequently violate morality because the "evolutionary" realm is the one we're actually living in at the moment. So we're torn between our two natures, one "spiritual" and one as "evolutionary primates". So he's trying to divorce the idea of natural selection from a belief in life after death in the first place, and of course what he's actually talking about is a religious idea (although he doesn't admit this yet).

Quote:

If you believe in life after death and poke the saber-tooth with a pointy stick, your genes don't make it to the next generation. So it's not the unsupported belief itself that's selected against, but the tendency to act upon unsupported beliefs.

This also happens if you force the saber-toothed tiger to sit in the comfy chair.

[Skeptic]

Seems like the usual argument from incredulity: "I have no idea how humans could develop morality, so GODIDIT".

[kuroyume0161]

Maia, thank you very much for the review.

Sounds like long-winded apologetics and an attack on the recently harvested 'evil atheists'. At first I thought that this might wind its way meanderingly from supposition to supposition like Tippler's "The Physics of Immortality" but it is apparently an attempt to put a number of carts before the horse. Babble on about specious points that support your specious argument (life after death) in order to justify a specific, specious singular event of importance (The Resurrection). No sale here.

By the way, I am someone who did experience a NDE in my youth. I was donating blood, as I was oft to do as a 'good christian/roman catholic', in the basement of my church of all places. Yes, I remember warm, fuzzy feelings, and something that appeared to be like a blue sky and field of sunflowers. And, as you can tell, it so much made my belief stronger that I'm now an atheist, humanist, skeptic.

[TimCallahan]

Originally Posted by Maia

Chapter Six: Undeniable Teleology: The Plot of Evolution
I think that D’Souza was itching to put this chapter a lot earlier, but he realized that if he did, the real nature of his motives in this entire argument would be a lot more obvious. It’s becoming more and more clear that the masks of secularism are dropping fast. Here, D’Souza argues that “nature operates according to a plan” because the earth was obviously fine-tuned for human life, and argues against “accidental” evolution, making a play for intelligent design.When he states “the mind may have arisen out of the material, but it is manifestly material”, it’s unfortunate, because the next couple of chapters could have been very interesting without this setup.
.

I wonder how anything as chaotic as mass extinctions - particularly the Permian extinction, which wiped out nearly 95% of all life, including most of the mammal-like reptiles - fit either an earth fine-tuned for life or any sort of teleological argument.

[tsig]

Originally Posted by TimCallahan

I wonder how anything as chaotic as mass extinctions - particularly the Permian extinction, which wiped out nearly 95% of all life, including most of the mammal-like reptiles - fit either an earth fine-tuned for life or any sort of teleological argument.

When they say fine-tuned for life you are supposed to hear "fine tuned for human life" the rest don't count because they have no souls.

[kuroyume0161]

Originally Posted by tsig

When they say fine-tuned for life you are supposed to hear "fine tuned for human life" the rest don't count because they have no souls.

Exactly. Which it isn't. I guess tornados and earthquakes are a way for god to tell people to build better homes? And, as has been pointed out in other places, the rest of the universe is happily fatal to human life. Not so 'fine tuned' in my book.

[TimCallahan]

Originally Posted by kuroyume0161

Exactly. Which it isn't. I guess tornados and earthquakes are a way for god to tell people to build better homes? And, as has been pointed out in other places, the rest of the universe is happily fatal to human life. Not so 'fine tuned' in my book.

I wonder if D'Souza will make the argument creationists make: Yes, the world was fine tuned for human life; but, because of the Fall of Man, God cursed the earth. Hence, disease, tornados etc.

[kuroyume0161]

Originally Posted by TimCallahan

I wonder if D'Souza will make the argument creationists make: Yes, the world was fine tuned for human life; but, because of the Fall of Man, God cursed the earth. Hence, disease, tornados etc.

Most likely. It is a vapid argument though. They can only point to current conditions, only speculate on those 'fine tuned' conditions without a hope of evidence, and then apply post hoc ergo propter hoc correlations - which is what it appears they are doing. The problem isn't even causation since the causal situation has no evidence (what it was like 'before the fall', was there a so-called Garden of Eden, no carnivores or omnivores, a tree of knowledge, etc.). Fortunately, more and more people understand Genesis as a creation myth not historical document. Unfortunately, not everyone has received the memo.

This is sort of like the antediluvian world that some are trying to foist upon us. http://www.earthhistory.org.uk/befor...ore-the-flood/

Sad...

[kuroyume0161]

Going off track here, but this page from the previously linked site explains creationism better than any other creationist source that I've ever seen:

http://www.earthhistory.org.uk/creation-theory-index/

Just in case it changes, I'll include a partial screenshot.

[Safe-Keeper]

Originally Posted by TimCallahan

I wonder if D'Souza will make the argument creationists make: Yes, the world was fine tuned for human life; but, because of the Fall of Man, God cursed the earth. Hence, disease, tornados etc.

From my experience:

Explanation 1: we have free will and foolishly choose to live in disaster-prone areas.

Explanation 2: We live in a post-Fall world.

Explanation 3: God could prevent those disasters and save countless lives, but then we wouldn't have free will for some reason.

[Maia]

Originally Posted by kuroyume0161

Maia, thank you very much for the review.

Sounds like long-winded apologetics and an attack on the recently harvested 'evil atheists'. At first I thought that this might wind its way meanderingly from supposition to supposition like Tippler's "The Physics of Immortality" but it is apparently an attempt to put a number of carts before the horse. Babble on about specious points that support your specious argument (life after death) in order to justify a specific, specious singular event of importance (The Resurrection). No sale here.

Quote:

Yep, pretty much. And it's a shorter review which is a lot easier to get through.

By the way, I am someone who did experience a NDE in my youth. I was donating blood, as I was oft to do as a 'good christian/roman catholic', in the basement of my church of all places. Yes, I remember warm, fuzzy feelings, and something that appeared to be like a blue sky and field of sunflowers. And, as you can tell, it so much made my belief stronger that I'm now an atheist, humanist, skeptic.

You had an near-death experience as a result of donating blood in the church basement?!? What on earth were those Catholics DOING??? I think it's a lot safer over at the Red Cross...

The NDE section of the book was just odd. For instance, the
Newsweek article about the book mentioned this:

Quote:

In the AWARE study, randomly generated images will be projected in the rooms of critically ill patients, in locations where they can be viewed only from above—by someone having an out-of-body experience, for instance. If patients who survive NDEs can identify these images subsequently—well, not to overdramatize, but several centuries of materialism in the natural sciences will have to be rewritten. The director of AWARE is Dr. Sam Parnia, a fellow at Weill Cornell Medical Center. He told NEWSWEEK that researchers at 20 hospitals have identified about 600 subjects for interviews. Parnia expects to publish his results in 2010.

which would make you think that there would be something about this study or this researcher in the book, wouldn't it? But there wasn't a single word. Overall, I don't think the entire subject was Christian-y enough for D'Souza.

Anyway, it's almost worth reading the entire book just for Chapter Six.

Quote:

There is an obvious and undeniable pattern in evolution itself which belies the whole random chance argument... now let us see how fine-tuned the earth is for human life in particular.

Quote:

While we may no longer regard the earth as the physical center of the universe, we are entirely justified in considering it as the biological center.

Quote:

If Jupiter did not exist or was smaller, Stuart Taylor writes, the earth would be bombarded with comets. It seems unlikely that our species could survive such disasters. Thanks, Jupiter!

Quote:

The moon seems to serve mainly as a facilitator of mood and romance, but in fact, the moon also performs a number of practical functions... without which it would make human life much more difficult.

Much entertainment to be had, or at least there would be except that there's something so pernicious about these arguments. They always sound close to sort of almost making sense until you realize why he's actually making them and where they're headed, and I think it's because he's paid attention and learned some tactics when he's debated people like Christopher Hitchens or read modern theology. I think that D'Souza really does represent a whole new breed of evangelical Christianity, and because of that, everyone should probably read this book to understand what's going on here, because we will be seeing this sophisticated presentation of these arguments again.

[kuroyume0161]

Originally Posted by Maia

You had an near-death experience as a result of donating blood in the church basement?!? What on earth were those Catholics DOING??? I think it's a lot safer over at the Red Cross...

It may have actually been the Red Cross but they did these blood drives through the church at least once a year (it's been a few decades since the occurence). The cause was that my friends and I went to do this and I hadn't eaten yet that day. So, I passed out during the process. But according to the nurses that surrounded me upon being revived, I had no pulse for a short while (less than a minute). Whether or not I recovered on my own or they applied CPR is still unknown to me.

[tsig]

Originally Posted by kuroyume0161

Going off track here, but this page from the previously linked site explains creationism better than any other creationist source that I've ever seen:

http://www.earthhistory.org.uk/creation-theory-index/

Just in case it changes, I'll include a partial screenshot.

http://www.kuroyumes-developmentzone...f_Creation.jpg

I'm surprised that it took them more than six days.

A quote from that site:

"But ‘life’ is something different from molecules. Life has to do with consciousness. Although bacteria and plants use the same DNA language as other organisms, they are not life in the sense that animals are."


Sums up what they consider life.

[tsig]

Originally Posted by Maia

You had an near-death experience as a result of donating blood in the church basement?!? What on earth were those Catholics DOING??? I think it's a lot safer over at the Red Cross...

The NDE section of the book was just odd. For instance, the
Newsweek article about the book mentioned this:



which would make you think that there would be something about this study or this researcher in the book, wouldn't it? But there wasn't a single word. Overall, I don't think the entire subject was Christian-y enough for D'Souza.

Anyway, it's almost worth reading the entire book just for Chapter Six.









Much entertainment to be had, or at least there would be except that there's something so pernicious about these arguments. They always sound close to sort of almost making sense until you realize why he's actually making them and where they're headed, and I think it's because he's paid attention and learned some tactics when he's debated people like Christopher Hitchens or read modern theology. I think that D'Souza really does represent a whole new breed of evangelical Christianity, and because of that, everyone should probably read this book to understand what's going on here, because we will be seeing this sophisticated presentation of these arguments again.

Of course fine tuning requires a fine tuner now I wonder just who D thinks that could be? Bet his initials are J. C. and he died for you and me.

[Eyeron]

Quote:

Basically, this book, Life After Death: The Evidence, is anything but. You may search from cover to cover, but no evidence will you find. Worse, there's really no attempt at presenting evidence, either. However, it's apparent that D'Souza has at least paid attention and taken notes when he's debated atheists, because the book does show a lot of sneaky debate tricks. Also, this is a ripoff—or, to be nice, a response to—the John Shelby Spong book, Eternal Life: A New Vision, Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell. Even the cover is almost the same! I may review Spong's book soon.

So what would you accept as real evidence?

Photos don't work. They're mostly just a photoshop.

See a strange light with weird properties, it's just a light.

So is there any kind of evidence that you would accept?

[Maia]

Originally Posted by kuroyume0161

It may have actually been the Red Cross but they did these blood drives through the church at least once a year (it's been a few decades since the occurence). The cause was that my friends and I went to do this and I hadn't eaten yet that day. So, I passed out during the process. But according to the nurses that surrounded me upon being revived, I had no pulse for a short while (less than a minute). Whether or not I recovered on my own or they applied CPR is still unknown to me.

Good to know that it wasn't the evil Red Cross's fault, although I hope you learned your lesson! Always be sure to eat before giving blood. (Although I have to say that I'm not sure if this could cause an actual near-death condition as such; LOC and even an indiscernible pulse aren't necessarily as extreme as that. Close enough though, and good to know that you made it through all right. )

Quote:

So what would you accept as real evidence?

Photos don't work. They're mostly just a photoshop.

See a strange light with weird properties, it's just a light.

So is there any kind of evidence that you would accept?

I'm not exactly sure that I understood what Eyeron meant by this. Actually, I'm sure that I didn't understand it at all. But what surprised me so much about D'Souza's book (although in a way, I guess it wasn't a surprise after all) was that he didn't really even TRY to come up with actual evidence. Take NDE's, for example. That's about the only category which really could provide actual evidence, and that was probably the weakest chapter in the book.

Verifiable Greyson-scale NDE's are fascinating neurobiological events, no doubt about it. As subjectively reported events, they are extremely consistent under specific sets of circumstances. There's actually been some very good research into the neurological issues involved which doesn't beg the question that NDE's somehow "prove life after death." Neither does this research rule out the idea that NDE's could indicate a survival of consciousness, of course, but that's not what it's about. But D'Souza doesn't deal with the real research at all, and I think that's exactly the reason why. It is not amenable to being used as a proof-text for Christianity. Instead, he spends the chapter throwing around some vague anecdotes and insisting that weird stories about supposedly "seeing heaven and hell" proved that NDE's were compatible with Christianity.

[Hux]

I just watched D'Souza for the first time in a debate with Hitchens. I sincerely had no idea what a loud mouthed little prick D'Souza is.

[PixyMisa]

Originally Posted by Eyeron

So what would you accept as real evidence?

Photos don't work. They're mostly just a photoshop.

See a strange light with weird properties, it's just a light.

So is there any kind of evidence that you would accept?

Independently verifiable evidence.

[Hux]

If there is existence after death, it would be a natural if unknown occurrence. What would be the point of being a Christian? If there is after death existence it would be a natural thing and therefore, promoting a particular religion would be completely unnecessary.

So why do religions claim life after death but they hold the only passport?

[kedo1981]

cause their dang liers

[I Ratant]

Originally Posted by Eyeron

So what would you accept as real evidence?

Photos don't work. They're mostly just a photoshop.

See a strange light with weird properties, it's just a light.

So is there any kind of evidence that you would accept?

.
I read a review of the book, and I got the impression the only real evidence of LAD d"Souza has is that it would be "unfair" if there weren't any. ?????
Ain't nuthin' "fair" about life; animal or vegetable.

[justcharlie09]

Ugh. Another one of these books. Well, we'll all know when we get there, won't we?

I understand the fascination with death. I mean, it really is a mystery. Life and death, why on earth we're on earth.

Every time someone comes out with a "afterlife evidence" book it just comes off as kooky. No one will EVER be able to prove an afterlife. E-V-E-R.

NDEs in themselves actually bring up more questions than answers for theists (such as myself) such as...why would a loving God give a little child an NDE involving the devil and torment? The only thing I can assume as a rational person or a Christian is that NDEs are a function of the brain experiencing trauma. It's the only way to come out with an answer that still leaves you with any God worth believing in.

Heaven, God, faith...all of these things are a function of trust in a relationship with the intangible. It may well be that there is no heaven. I trust, whatever the case, that there is purpose in the universe and that even annihilation on my own death is somehow okay. TRUST. Besides, the biggest question is not after death. After death is settled whether we know it or not. It's what we're doing before it happens. Trying to live right and in proper relationship to your God and other people.

As I've said in other posts... it isn't faith if you have to keep demanding proof.

....

I'd actually feel better about these books if these authors would be more honest and title them "My Guesses about the Afterlife and Why I've Made Them"

[fls]

Thank you for the review Maia. I did actually read it all. I wondered whether you got this quote correct:

“the mind may have arisen out of the material, but it is manifestly material”

It seems like it would make more sense if his last word was "immaterial".

Linda

[fls]

Originally Posted by Eyeron

So what would you accept as real evidence?

Photos don't work. They're mostly just a photoshop.

See a strange light with weird properties, it's just a light.

So is there any kind of evidence that you would accept?

I've always thought that if the experiments by Dr. Parnia returned even a single positive result, that would really get my attention. I'm guessing that they haven't (only because it seems like it would warrant an announcement), but I am looking forward to the publication of his results.

Linda

[justcharlie09]

Originally Posted by fls

I've always thought that if the experiments by Dr. Parnia returned even a single positive result, that would really get my attention. I'm guessing that they haven't (only because it seems like it would warrant an announcement), but I am looking forward to the publication of his results.

Linda

This guy?

http://www.mindbodysymposium.com/Hum...s-project.html

I saw a snippet about this on TV...placing signs up above patients so they can read/report them after an out-of-body NDE?

Honestly, that gave me a good laugh. If something traumatic enough happened to me to knock me out of body and make me float above while doctors were trying to jolt my corpse back to life...have to say, the last thing I'd be bothering with would be some stupid placard or trying to remember it.

Maybe I'm in a minority on that one.

[fls]

Originally Posted by justcharlie09

This guy?

http://www.mindbodysymposium.com/Hum...s-project.html

I saw a snippet about this on TV...placing signs up above patients so they can read/report them after an out-of-body NDE?

I think they are pictures or shapes, rather than words. But I don't really know and they probably don't want to advertise what they are - blinding and all that.

Quote:

Honestly, that gave me a good laugh. If something traumatic enough happened to me to knock me out of body and make me float above while doctors were trying to jolt my corpse back to life...have to say, the last thing I'd be bothering with would be some stupid placard or trying to remember it.

It's the sort of thing that people report on anyway - just not so easily filled in for the story.

Quote:

Maybe I'm in a minority on that one.

I guess I'm not so incurious as you. Don't know who's in the minority on that.

Linda

[justcharlie09]

Originally Posted by fls

I think they are pictures or shapes, rather than words. But I don't really know and they probably don't want to advertise what they are - blinding and all that.



It's the sort of thing that people report on anyway - just not so easily filled in for the story.



I guess I'm not so incurious as you. Don't know who's in the minority on that.

Linda

I am curious, and I'll probably read the findings in the end. As I've read a lot of stuff about NDEs and afterlife experiments, etc. My expectations aren't high.

I still think it's funny. If you agree or disagree, that's fine. I just can't personally imagine *myself* in a state of major trauma, floating outside of my body, then coming back and reporting on the sign posted above my would-have-been death bed.

Think about times you've experienced something traumatic...how good was your memory? Mine, so far, in traumatic situations, has been crap. All I can remember are the most glaring and/or personal details...not fine details about signs on the wall or what people were wearing.

As far as NDEs go, again, it really does seem like a natural function of the brain. The studies done to this end are far more convincing than ones like U of A's Gary Schwartz.

If there is life after death, then it is a nonphysical experience or else an experience that takes place somewhere else in a multiverse or some weird cosmic realm. Science can study and understand the physical world and physical death. I don't know how one would propose to take data on and evaluate something outside the physical world/physical experience.

That's the problem I see anyway.

Again, if I were dying...the last thing on my mind would be a sign on the wall in the room. But, I do give they guy kudos for creativity Maybe there will be people in the act of dying/being revived that will have a high attention to detail and come back with a meaningful report. Time will tell. Although, if I had to place a bet today...I'd probably bet against it.

[fls]

Originally Posted by justcharlie09

I just can't personally imagine *myself* in a state of major trauma, floating outside of my body, then coming back and reporting on the sign posted above my would-have-been death bed.

I understand that you personally can't imagine this. However, these are the sorts of details that people who have experienced OBE's will report. So regardless of what you imagine will happen, the researchers happened to have chosen to go with what actually happens.

Example:

"...you took my dentures out of my mouth and put them onto that car, it had all these bottles on it and there was this sliding drawer underneath and there you put my teeth..."

"He was also able to describe correctly and in detail the small room in which he had been resuscitated as well as the appearance of those present like myself"

http://profezie3m.altervista.org/arc...DE.htm#results

Linda

[Hux]

How does one define a 'Near death experience"? As far as I can tell, such subjects are nowhere near death as I understand it. It just sounds like a consciousness that is confusing for a brief while.

[justcharlie09]

Originally Posted by fls

I understand that you personally can't imagine this. However, these are the sorts of details that people who have experienced OBE's will report. So regardless of what you imagine will happen, the researchers happened to have chosen to go with what actually happens.

Example:

"...you took my dentures out of my mouth and put them onto that car, it had all these bottles on it and there was this sliding drawer underneath and there you put my teeth..."

"He was also able to describe correctly and in detail the small room in which he had been resuscitated as well as the appearance of those present like myself"

http://profezie3m.altervista.org/arc...DE.htm#results

Linda

You seriously can't see how the whole scenario could be funny? I mean, just a little bit?

I'll read the results. I actually bookmarked the page after I saw the snippet on TV. What's wrong with finding it humorous and not expecting much?

Sorry to crimp your chi, but if there are out of body experiences as part of near death/reviving... then wouldn't the best "evidence" you could hope for end up being anecdotal?

How is science going to test something outside of physical experience? I already gave him points for creativity.

Still, say you have a group of 30 people who have an OBE, and two of them remember in detail what was on the sign above the bed and the rest don't? The result is still worse than chance, isn't it?

I'm not saying "there is no afterlife" or "out of body experiences cannot exist"...I'm simply asking: How could you reliably measure it?

[justcharlie09]

Quote:

And yet, neurophysiological processes must play some part in NDE. Similar experiences can be induced through electrical stimulation of the temporal lobe (and hence of the hippocampus) during neurosurgery for epilepsy,23 with high carbon dioxide levels (hypercarbia),24 and in decreased cerebral perfusion resulting in local cerebral hypoxia as in rapid acceleration during training of fighter pilots,25 or as in hyperventilation followed by valsalva manoeuvre.4 Ketamine-induced experiences resulting from blockage of the NMDA receptor,26 and the role of endorphin, serotonin, and enkephalin have also been mentioned,27 as have near-death-like experiences after the use of LSD,28 psilocarpine, and mescaline.21 These induced experiences can consist of unconsciousness, out-of-body experiences, and perception of light or flashes of recollection from the past. These recollections, however, consist of fragmented and random memories unlike the panoramic life-review that can occur in NDE. Further, transformational processes with changing life-insight and disappearance of fear of death are rarely reported after induced experiences.

Thus, induced experiences are not identical to NDE, and so, besides age, an unknown mechanism causes NDE by stimulation of neurophysiological and neurohumoral processes at a subcellular level in the brain in only a few cases during a critical situation such as clinical death. These processes might also determine whether the experience reaches consciousness and can be recollected.

With lack of evidence for any other theories for NDE, the thus far assumed, but never proven, concept that consciousness and memories are localised in the brain should be discussed. How could a clear consciousness outside one's body be experienced at the moment that the brain no longer functions during a period of clinical death with flat EEG?22 Also, in cardiac arrest the EEG usually becomes flat in most cases within about 10 s from onset of syncope.29,30 Furthermore, blind people have described veridical perception during out-of-body experiences at the time of this experience.31 NDE pushes at the limits of medical ideas about the range of human consciousness and the mind-brain relation.

Another theory holds that NDE might be a changing state of consciousness (transcendence), in which identity, cognition, and emotion function independently from the unconscious body, but retain the possibility of non-sensory perception.7,8,22,28,31

I actually have no problem with an afterlife. In fact, it is part of my belief-system and spiritual understanding of the world.

All the same, how do you test for it? The most this study can do is say "there's something to it, but we don't know". Similar things to NDEs can be induced, but they don't necessarily seem to have the same impact on the individual as a "real" NDE. Which tells us they may, in fact, be quite different...but the whys and hows are still sketchy.

How do you tell which is which? How do you objectively study a subjective experience?

Then, again, there is the experience of negative NDEs experienced by some people (sometimes children). Yes, the percentage is small...but how do we view those experiences?

Perhaps I'm naive in that I sincerely hope that young children experiencing terrifying NDEs are, in fact, experiencing some form of brain-induced nightmare than some other-worldy reality.

In short, I'm sure researchers will try. I don't necessarily fault them for trying to figure it out. It just doesn't seem like, at the present time, we can expect anything conclusive to arise from the findings. I'll still read them...all the same.

[fls]

Originally Posted by justcharlie09

You seriously can't see how the whole scenario could be funny? I mean, just a little bit?

I'm not arguing that it is not possible to find humour in various situation (I'm the last one who should be doing that).

Quote:

I'll read the results. I actually bookmarked the page after I saw the snippet on TV. What's wrong with finding it humorous and not expecting much?

I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Quote:

Sorry to crimp your chi, but if there are out of body experiences as part of near death/reviving... then wouldn't the best "evidence" you could hope for end up being anecdotal?

How is science going to test something outside of physical experience? I already gave him points for creativity.

Still, say you have a group of 30 people who have an OBE, and two of them remember in detail what was on the sign above the bed and the rest don't? The result is still worse than chance, isn't it?

What do you think the chance is that someone would incorporate a very specific image which is not usually part of any medical setting into the story (let's say something like an image of a top hat underneath a rainbow on an orange background)?

Like I said, if even one positive result were returned, it would get my attention. The difference between this study and an anecdote is that this study involves an intervention - an artificially introduced feature whose presence in the story would be unequivocably remarkable (like an individual surviving an almost universally fatal illness after receiving penicillin).

Quote:

I'm not saying "there is no afterlife" or "out of body experiences cannot exist"...I'm simply asking: How could you reliably measure it?

The intention of this study is to detect it in a way that doesn't leave room for our mind to simply fill in the blanks due to familiarity.

Linda

[Hux]

Indeed. Since we have an entirely workable definition of death, in what way do these so called NDE's qualify as NDE?

[justcharlie09]

Quote:

I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Okay, thought you were getting mad at me for that. I still think it'd have to be one heck of a picture to get my attention in that scenario. Something so outlandishly strange... you know, a good comedian could have a field day with this. I hope they'll post the images they use (after the fact, of course).

Quote:

What do you think the chance is that someone would incorporate a very specific image which is not usually part of any medical setting into the story (let's say something like an image of a top hat underneath a rainbow on an orange background)?

It would be impressive and would get my attention. I'm not sure it would constitute irrefutable evidence, though. Now, if you had a large sample size, and a good portion were coming back with detailed reports of these strange pictures. Yes, that would be strong evidence in favor of OBEs.

I still doubt that will be the outcome, but I may read the study and find myself pleasantly surprised. It's a strange world we live in.

Quote:

Like I said, if even one positive result were returned, it would get my attention. The difference between this study and an anecdote is that this study involves an intervention - an artificially introduced feature whose presence in the story would be unequivocably remarkable (like an individual surviving an almost universally fatal illness after receiving penicillin).

It would get my attention, but I don't think it would be enough to claim "the afterlife is proven" or "out of body experiences are real"...not unless more than just one person reported correctly. And even then, more investigation would be warranted.

Quote:

The intention of this study is to detect it in a way that doesn't leave room for our mind to simply fill in the blanks due to familiarity.

Again, points for creativity. It's an interesting design. I'm still not expecting much. Maybe one or two surprises, at best, but nothing that verifies the "great beyond".

I've often wondered how much people come up with in OBEs and NDEs from general familiarity.

[Hux]

How come the likes of Lazarus et al, who had much 'nearer' experiences, had absolutely nothing to say on the matter?