EVIDENCE THAT CONSCIOUSNESS DOESN’T REQUIRE A LIVING PHYSICAL BODY

What if consciousness exists apart from a physical body? Many would then have to revise their worldview. They would have to acknowledge the reality of the world of spirits and surrender the worldview that they had held – naturalism, materialism, and perhaps even atheism. Instead, it is easier to dogmatically proclaim that spiritual realities are not within the purview of science.

However, it seems that science can speak to the question of consciousness existing apart from a body:

·            Of the 2,060 patients from Austria, the US and the UK interviewed for the study who had survived cardiac arrest, almost 40 per cent said that they recall some form of awareness after being pronounced clinically dead. http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/670781/There-IS-life-after-DEATH-Scientists-reveal-shock-findings-from-groundbreaking-study

·            Of those who said they had experienced some awareness, just two per cent said their experience was consistent with the feeling of an outer body experience – where one feels completely aware and can hear and see what’s going on around them after death. Almost half of the respondents said the experience was not of awareness, but rather of fear.

One man was able to recall the events in the hospital with “eerie accuracy” after he had “died temporarily.”

This finding has often been reported but often ignored. Why? Perhaps Dr. Parnia’s response is illuminative:

·            “The detailed recollections of visual awareness in this case were consistent with verified events."

·            "This is significant, since it has often been assumed that experiences in relation to death are likely hallucinations or illusions.”

These findings are not unusual. Wikipedia reports:

·            In a review article B. Greyson refers to Van Lommel's study (as well as other sources) and mentions that there have been "documented and corroborated accurate perceptions by near-death experiencers of incidents that occurred during the time when the brain was fully anesthetized or deprived of blood flow, as during cardiac arrest or respiratory arrest". B. Greyson also mentions that apparently some patients reported events that occurred beyond what their sense organs could perceive and that would have been impossible for them to perceive even in a conscious state. (Greyson, Bruce (2015-11-09). "Western Scientific Approaches to Near-Death Experiences". Humanities. 4 (4): 775–796. doi:10.3390/h4040775.)

·            Another review article reports that 41 (12%) of the cardiac arrest patients interviewed provided accounts similar to the Sam Parnia's 2001 study. Also, the same review article. One patient had a conventional out of body experience where he reported being able to watch and recall events during the time of his cardiac arrest. His claims were confirmed by hospital personnel. “This did not appear consistent with hallucinatory or illusory experiences, as the recollections were compatible with real and verifiable rather than imagined events”. (Parnia, Sam (2014-11-01). "Death and consciousness--an overview of the mental and cognitive experience of death". Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 1330: 75–93. doi:10.1111/nyas.12582)

These findings point powerfully to another reality, a spiritual reality, outside of the physical. If this is so, then the existence of a supreme Spirit Being from which all the spiritual entities derive their existence, becomes very probable.

P. van Lommel concluded:

·            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?... (the) NDE pushes at the limits of medical ideas about the range of human consciousness and the mind-brain relation. (van Lommel P, van Wees R, Meyers V, Elfferich I. (2001) "Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A prospective Study in the Netherlands" in The Lancet, December 15; 358(9298):2039–45)

However, such findings are ignored, because they do not fit into the prevailing materialistic paradigm – that nothing exists outside of the physical world. To suggest otherwise opens the door to considerations about the existence of God – an inconvenient and uncomfortable truth.

EVIDENCE THAT CONSCIOUSNESS DOESN’T REQUIRE A LIVING BODY

What if consciousness exists apart from a physical body? Many would then have to revise their worldview. Instead, it is easier to dogmatically proclaim that this is not within the purview of science.

However, it seems that science can speak to the question of consciousness existing apart from a body:

·       Of the 2,060 patients from Austria, the US and the UK interviewed for the study who had survived cardiac arrest, almost 40 per cent said that they recall some form of awareness after being pronounced clinically dead. http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/670781/There-IS-life-after-DEATH-Scientists-reveal-shock-findings-from-groundbreaking-study

·       Of those who said they had experienced some awareness, just two per cent said their experience was consistent with the feeling of an outer body experience – where one feels completely aware and can hear and see what’s going on around them after death. Almost half of the respondents said the experience was not of awareness, but rather of fear.

One man was able to recall the events in the hospital with “eerie accuracy” after he had “died temporarily.”

This finding has often been reported but often ignored. Why? Perhaps Dr. Parnia’s response is illuminative:

·       “The detailed recollections of visual awareness in this case were consistent with verified events."

·       "This is significant, since it has often been assumed that experiences in relation to death are likely hallucinations or illusions.”

Such findings are ignored, because they do not fit into the prevailing materialistic paradigm that nothing exists outside of the physical world. To suggest otherwise opens the door to considerations about the existence of God – an inconvenient truth.

It is Impossible to Prove that Evolution is an Unguided, Naturalistic Process

Evolution is the poster-boy for the naturalism – the worldview that claims that you don’t need God to explain anything, since everything can be explained in terms of natural causation and science. Consequently, students are taught that God is irrelevant since the natural laws explain everything.

I encountered a young college student working on her master’s degree who told me this very thing. She had been raised as an atheist and therefore explained:

• I don’t need to invoke an irrelevant deity. Science explains everything. Of course, we can’t explain everything right now, but evolution proves that science is all that we need to make sense out of this world.

While I don’t believe in macro-evolution – evolution of the big or vertical changes – I could tell that I would be wasting my time by trying to prove evolution wrong. So I argued these points instead:

1. The theory of evolution in no way can prove that an Intelligent Designer wasn’t guiding the process. Evolutionists will counter by saying that evolution seems to be a design-less process with many dead-ends. They then reason that if a God had designed the world, it wouldn’t have progressed in this manner. However, in order to conclude this, they would first have to prove what a designed process looks like and how anything that deviated from their model could not have been designed. But admittedly, they do not know the mind of God or His possible reasons for doing things in a way that might seem chaotic to the evolutionist.

2. Even if unguided evolution could be proved – which it can’t – it doesn’t prove that the existence of everything can be explained by unguided processes.

3. Besides, evolutionists lack a detailed explanation for how anything – whether proteins or DNA – could have arisen naturally.

4. Most damning of all, the evolutionist must appeal to pre-existing laws and properties, all of which give the appearance of design, harmony, universality and immutability. And there exists no natural explanation to explain these things. Besides, such explanations are impossible. Science cannot explain the origin of natural laws before “natural” causation even existed. As such, it makes more sense to invoke an intelligent and eternal Being to explain a universe that had a beginning.

5. For naturalism to be considered a viable theory, it must be able to explain all existence. However, there are many things, in addition to the laws, that seem to defy a naturalistic explanation – DNA, Life, the Cell, Freewill, Consciousness, Objective Moral Law, Irreducible Complexity…

As a consequence of their fundamentalist attachment to the religion of nature-did-it, they see only what will agree with their naturalistic presuppositions and ignore the fact that their theory is fraught with many unsolvable problems. Meanwhile, the evolutionist has also stripped life of any inherent meaning or purpose other than the animalistic pleasures and survival.

The atheist listened carefully but didn’t answer. The conversation moved on, but I hope that some thoughts lingered on.

Humanity, Mammalian Equality, and the Divine

Ideas and beliefs are our masters. As we think, so also do we live! Let’s do a thought experiment. Ingrid Newkirk, the head of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, believes that we should make no moral or value distinction among mammals: “A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They are all mammals.”

What are the implications of such a belief? Many! Our laws reflect our values. If there is no moral distinction among mammals, then our laws should reflect this belief. They should protect mammals against murder, not only by humans but by other amoral animal agents. Consequently, we should prosecute any mammal who kills a mouse of a rat, but we can’t stop there. We should also prosecute any mammal who steals from a mammal – think milk.

What would the implications of such “upgraded” laws be? Pigs, rats and cows would inevitably overrun our streets, farms and gardens. Some fundamentalist animal rights folk will answer, “So what! It’s about time that the tables are reversed.”

However, such a reversal would have even more serious costs. When our laws are revised to protect every mammal – and this would make our laws unenforceable – then none will be protected. Expect to see libel, theft, murder and sexual abuse skyrocket!

The problems don’t stop here. Even Newkirk’s position is man-centered, depending on human judgment. Why should our laws stop at protecting mammals? Does Newkirk promote the value of mammals because she too is a mammal, and, as a mammal, she confers greater value on mammals? From the perspective of animal rights, this seems very chauvinistic. Why not also extend value and protection to fish and birds? Would we deny mammalian worth to them simply because they are more dissimilar from us?

Some will interject that, “Birds and fish are less intelligent… or emotive… or conscious than mammals. Therefore they don’t have the value that mammals have!”

Apart from the questionable science upon which such arguments rest, this position(s) has even more fundamental problems. Why should the level of intelligent or emotion bestow a greater value on an animal? While science might be able to demonstrate that certain species can perform certain tasks more efficiently, it is unable to answer the question of value.

Instead, the question of value or worth requires an even more fundamental question: “Value or worth to whom?” Is there an ultimate source that determines value or is this entire concept just a human invention to bestow meaning on life?

If we created this idea, and value has no existence outside of what we determine value to be, then we have returned to man-centered center and dominated world. However, it is an arbitrary world, depending on who is in power and can enforce their worldview. It also means that anything goes, because there is no absolute standard of truth to determine the worth of anything. It means that if I think that people who look or act like me are the most evolved, and if I attach value to the highest level of evolution, then who can say that I am wrong!

Real value therefore depends on the existence of immutable and universal truth that transcends us and our competing opinions, and therefore also a Truth-giver that transcends us.

Some will interject, “We have natural laws, and they don’t require your Truth-giver. Why then can’t we have a natural law that bestows value?”

There are many problems with this hope. For one thing, there is no evidence that our natural, universal, immutable laws don’t require a Truth-giver. Perhaps even more problematic, a natural law that bestows value cannot be natural. Once again, value is the product of personhood and not science, which can only tell us what is. Value is the product of intelligence, consciousness and will, not of impersonal and mindless forces.

We can demonstrate this by showing the distinction between the law of gravity and the law that imparts value. The effects of the former can be bypassed or overcome; those of the values law cannot.  We can board an airplane that violates the natural effects of gravity without consequence. However, we cannot sex-traffic teenagers and pre-teens without violating the law of value. Hence, this law is a different kind of law – a Personal law. In contrast, gravity can attract, but it cannot value anything.

Because of the universality, immutable, and Personhood of value, it doesn’t matter whether we go to Alaska or the desert or even enter a time machine to go to a different age, the same immutable law of value will confront us and the girls we intend to traffic. Nor will any of our scientific innovations change it. Our conscience instructs us that our value as humans transcends any changes or innovations, and our conscience will punish us if we defy the law we find therein! In this sense, it seems to be more un-defiable and Personal than the law of gravity, which we can side-step without any consequence.

At this, some will respond, “I know what is right and wrong without your God.” However, it is impossible to know what is “right and wrong” unless there is a real and objective right and wrong, which transcends our bio-chemical reactions. However, you can say, “I have the very real feeling of right and wrong regardless!” True, but irrelevant! Feelings cannot equate with truth unless truth and value have an independent existence, apart from our feelings.