Near-Death Experiences as Evidence for Afterlife

NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES

One of the most popular beliefs of all time is the one that says we get to live on in a different form and in a different place after we die. If true, it means that death isn’t really death in the sense that it marks the true end of it all. It’s a transition, nothing more. This is an extraordinary claim, of course. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have any extraordinary evidence to go with it. The best we have are unusual stories from a small number of people who claim to have died and then been whisked away to heaven or hell for a brief visit before returning to Earth to live again.

Near-death experiences are viewed by many people as nothing less than absolute proof that there is an afterlife. I certainly agree that these accounts can be powerful and make a huge emotional impact on us. I met a woman who said she died and visited heaven before being sent back to Earth by Jesus himself. She told me all about the gates of heaven being “fixed with pearls and diamonds,” streets that were literally paved with gold, and fruit bowls that magically replenished themselves when emptied. She saw angels teaching newcomers how to properly worship God. And then she met Jesus. “His beard was cut perfectly,” she said. “And he had the most beautiful, crystal-blue eyes. He spoke to me, saying he would anoint me and send me back to Earth.”56

I also have read books by people who claim to have died and gone to heaven. I even read one by a man who says he died and went to hell for a brief time. When people cite stories like this in an attempt to convince me that there is an afterlife, however, I point out that although there may be an afterlife, we can’t rely on stories to prove it. This is too big and too important to simply trust a tale told by a person who is no less fallible than the rest of us. I may be willing to assume that a particular storyteller is sane and honest, but how can I be sure that this person did not simply experience an extreme dream that left him with an emotionally charged memory that he then confused for a real experience? We know that this kind of thing can and does happen. The man who went to hell, for example, began his amazing journey from his bed after going to sleep at night. He woke up on the floor next to his bed. He was shaken up and scared, and says he clearly remembers being in hell. But did he really ever leave his bedroom? Aren’t a dream and the imperfections of human memory the most likely explanations for what happened to him? Without evidence, I would never accuse any of these people of being dishonest. But I do accuse all of them of being human. And with that comes an inescapable vulnerability to wild dreams, delusions, hallucinations, and flawed or false memories.

Brain science can provide likely natural explanations for the standard components of most near-death-experience stories. A light at the end of a tunnel, feelings of peace and tranquility, seeing loved ones, and meeting religious figures can all be explained by natural processes in the stressed or dying brain. Nothing supernatural is necessary. This does not disprove the existence of some kind of an afterlife, of course. It does mean that these near-death-experience stories are not the overwhelming proof so many people think they are. If only some of these people could bring back a piece of heaven to show us and prove their claim. Maybe a magically replenishing fruit bowl, for example. If physical objects can’t make the return trip, what about information, something so special and unique that we all would know that somebody really did go to heaven or hell? But all we ever hear are dramatic stories that easily could have been produced by dreams and imagination.

When the brain is short on oxygen, very weird things can happen. Pilots report having tunnel vision (light at the end of a tunnel) before blackout from extreme g-forces in a cockpit or during a centrifuge ride. This is because blood drains from the eyes first before blackout. People who are not dying but who have brains that are being stressed and oxygen-deprived also report seeing people and things that are not there. Scientists can even induce hallucinations and out-of-body experiences in a person who is not oxygen-deprived or dying by simply targeting a specific area of the brain with a mild electrical current. That’s it. No afterlife needed, just electricity.

I can personally connect with stories that describe feelings of pure peace and calm even as death approaches. When I was around twelve years old or so, I banged my face and cut my leg during a bad fall while crossing a canal on an elevated sewer pipe. Battered and bleeding, lying on the canal’s bank, I was in bad shape. But I felt great! My brain took me someplace far away from agony and panic. I remember lying there, face in the dirt, feeling nothing but groovy. It wasn’t bad enough to qualify as a near-death experience, and I don’t remember feeling like I ever left my physical body, but it was definitely an unusual experience. The nice feelings soon faded, of course, and pain arrived. Because of that incident, I have no problem understanding what people are talking about when they say they felt happy and wonderful even though they were dying. I also can believe people when they say they had unusual visions or felt like they went somewhere in this state. But why would anything like this be proof of something so extraordinary as heaven, hell, or some other kind of afterlife?

Maybe it would help if we all keep in mind what the human brain is capable of conjuring up when things are going well. On a nice day, when the Sun is shining and our health is optimal, we are all capable of being fooled by our brains to see, hear, feel, experience, and remember things that are not real and never happened. If this is possible—and we know it is—then shouldn’t we be skeptical about claims of experiences that occur to people who are near death or thought to be “dead” briefly? Don’t you think a human brain under that kind of stress would be even less reliable?

If one wants to hope for something more after death, that’s fine, of course. Like most people, I certainly would love to cheat death somehow. But no one should be misled to think that there is some vast collection of near-death cases that have proved the existence of an afterlife. All we have are stories, which alone prove nothing.