A recent poll has found that 1 in 25 people claim to have had near-death experiences. A quick search at Amazon will show many books have been written about near-death experiences (NDEs) claiming the experiences are proof of heaven, an afterlife or even hell.  I read my first book on NDEs back in the 90’s.  It was Dr. Maurice Rawlings’ book, To Hell and Back.  If you ask most people what they think about NDEs they will say it is always like heaven.  They will think of beings of light and lush indescribable gardens.  However, what struck me about Rawlings’ accounts was that the after-life people were experiencing was not always heavenly; in fact it was darn right hellish.  Recently a very popular book came out describing the events of a 4 year old boy who recounts an experience of heaven while his body was in emergency surgery.  In Heaven is for Real, Colten explains what he saw and who he met.  Skeptics will no doubt discount his experiences because there is no way to verify what he saw.  However, Colton said he met his miscarried sister, whom no one had told him about, and his great grandfather who died 30 years before Colton was born, then shared impossible-to-know details about each.  The question remains what do you do with stories like that?

In a recent interview Gary Habermas relates what we can and cannot learn from NDEs.  Habermas explains that one of the most import aspects of researching near-death experiences (NDEs) is the determination of verifiable evidence.  Many people who have had a near-death experience relate that they went to heaven or, in some cases that they went to hell.  However, stories like this are subjective.  They are subjective in the sense that what they saw may have been true, but there is no way of verifying their experience.  This simply means that NDEs don’t prove whether heaven or hell exists.  However, some people relate stories where they see or hear something somewhere where their body could not have possibly seen or heard. (For example, seeing shoes on the roof of the hospital or hearing what nurses were saying three floors up.) When those stories relate to things that the person had no way of knowing and that can be verified, it is a good indication that the mind is more than the matter in your head and that our conscious mind is non-corporeal (not physical). Essentially, verifiable NDEs are convincing proof that materialistic naturalism is false and supernaturalism is true.

I don’t know that I would call NDEs proof of heaven or hell.  It's not that I discount those stories. For me, I wouldn’t want to overstate what the evidence proves.  What is convincing for me is that NDEs seem to be strong evidence that militates against a materialistic naturalistic worldview, where the only conclsion is your mind is nothing more than the material in your head. NDEs prove the mind is not material and that lends strong credibility to an afterlife.

If you plan to investigate NDEs I suggest you start with Habermas’ book, Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality.  Then I would move on to Steve Miller’s book, Near-Death Experiences as Evidence for the Existence of God and Heaven: A Brief Introduction in Plain Language.

Reference Notes:

• Koukl, Greg and Habermas, Gary. 'What We Can and Cannot Learn from Near Death Experiences?' Stand To Reason Podcast. 25 FEB 2013 http://www.str.org/site/PageServer?pagename=podcast accessed 04 MAR 2013
• J. Steve Miller, Brain Autin. 'Steve Miller Intertview' Apologetics 315 Interviews Podcast http://www.apologetics315.com/p/interviews.html accessed 18 MAR 2013

See Also:

• Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality by Gary R. Habermas and J. P. Moreland
• Near-Death Experiences as Evidence for the Existence of God and Heaven: A Brief Introduction in Plain Language by J. Steve Miller and Jeffrey Long MD
• Life after Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon - Survival of Bodily Death by Raymond A. Moody
• Reflections on Life After Life by Dr. Raymond Moody
• Return from Tomorrow by George C. Ritchie and Elizabeth Sherrill
• To Hell and Back by Maurice Rawlings
• 23 Minutes In Hell: One Man's Story About What He Saw, Heard, and Felt in that Place of Tormentby Bill Wiese
• 90 Minutes in Heaven: A True Story of Death and Life by Don Piper & Cecil Murphey
• Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back by Todd Burpo & Lynn Vincent

Chronicle (the Movie)

I think there is much more to this movie than meets the eye.

Spoiler Alert: Don’t read if you want to see the movie.

Storyline: Three high school friends gain telekinetic powers after making an incredible discovery of a strange object in a cave. Soon, though, they find their lives spinning out of control and their bond tested as one of them embraces his darker side.

What would happen if you gave a group of teenagers extremely strong telekinetic powers?

It depends on the teenagers. In this movie you have three very different teenagers brought together by accidently gaining telekinetic powers from an unknown source. They bond together as they learn what they can do with their powers. Steve is running for class president and is the most popular kid in school. Andrew is an unpopular misfit with a dying mother and alcoholic abusive father. Matt fits in somewhere between the two.

Andrew uses his powers and accidentally hurts someone. Matthew, his cousin, says they need to come up with rules on when and how to use the powers. I can see him quoting Uncle Ben from Spiderman, “With great power comes great responsibility.” In this situation, Matt was pleading for an moral standard.

Together they continue to learn and grow their powers. However, giving people powers that are not prepared for it can be devastating. Andrew and Steve do a magic show during the schools talent show. Andrew’s reputation changes instantly; finally, he is popular. However, Teenagers’ feelings are fickle, so when Andrew pukes on a girl at the after party, the taunting becomes worse that it was before. In addition, his father becomes more abusive as he thinks his son is up to no good. Andrew starts to feel the walls closing in.

Out of anger, Andrew accidentally kills Steve, who was trying to tell him he was still his friend. He then confronts his father and beats him up for a change. This becomes the beginning of the end, as if Andrew had tasted blood for the first time.

In a key scene to the story Andrew sits in a junk yard and crushes a car with his mind. In his internal monologue Andrew uses naturalistic evolutionary bases to explain his justification for his coming actions. His first premise is the idea that an apex predator does not feel guilt in killing inferior animals. His next premise is that he is now a superior being. His conclusion is that he then should not feel guilty if he harms others.

The final straw comes when he cannot buy medicine to ease his mother’s pain. He then rationalizes robbing people. When a robbery at a gas station goes wrong and the station explodes, Andrew ends up unconscious in the hospital. His dad comes in and tells him his mother has died and blames him because he had to go look for him that night.

Andrew snaps and the mayhem begins. Matt goes to talk to him and reason with him, but he won’t listen. The talk deteriorates to an all-out brawl. They tear the city up with their fight. In the end his anger gets the best of him, and Matt has to kill him.

You can see the materialistic naturalism based morality play out with the Judeo-Christian based objective morality being contrasted as the story progresses.[1] The self-destructive materialistic naturalism played out to it’s natural conclusion. The moral of the story: with great power comes great responsibility, and if you don’t believe you have a responsibility, you will follow self-gratification to your own destruction, leaving behind untold carnage. This is a powerful story with a powerful message.

Movie Information: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1706593/

Footnote:

[1] Both materialistic naturalism and Judeo-Christian moralities are objective. I just want to point out they are both based on something rather than the relativist position where morality depends on any number of factors. Materialistic naturalism is very much like social Darwinism (social evolution). Naturalism holds that only natural laws and forces operate in the universe and not supernatural ones, i.e. God. Materialism holds that the only things that exist in the Universe are matter and energy. Morality is thus derived as a result of material interactions i.e. genetics. It follows from this that if there is no higher power, why do we have constraints on behavior? Why not live out survival of the fittest? Morality is thus objective because you are hardwired for it. Does a lion feel guilty for killing a gazelle?

On the other hand, the Judeo-Christian view is that morality comes from the Creator. Especially in Christian doctrine, every person was created in the image of God (Imago Dei) and thus has value. It follows then that killing of people is wrong because there is a command not to from God and because people are of value to God.

One could argue that the movie does not specifically show Matt’s position as Judeo-Christian. I guess that is true, it could be based on Jainism where all life and non-violence is considered sacred. Some Native American tribes would have a similar quasi-pantheistic or animistic view. In any case Matt’s view of morality is transcendent (being entirely beyond the universe) while Andrews is materialistic (being entirely in the universe).

I listened to a series of lectures titled "Plato, Socrates, and the Dialogues" which was given by Professor Michael Surgrue of Princeton University.   There are 16 lectures, each lasting 45 minutes. 

http://www.thegreatcourses.com/ttcx/CourseDescLong2.aspx?cid=463&pc=Philosophy%20and%20Intellectual%20History