Dreams Of The Afterlife

Over the past several months, I've come across some resources I want to recommend on paranormal issues. These are subjects often discussed among nurses, hospice workers, and other people working in relevant fields, covered on television, and brought up in books, YouTube videos, conversations about family experiences, and elsewhere. But the large majority of Christians are very poorly prepared to address these topics.

An Important Book On Near-Death Experiences

I recently read Gregory Shushan's Near-Death Experience In Indigenous Religions (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), which is an important book in many contexts. You can watch an interview Shushan did with Alex Tsakiris here. The video will give you an overview of the book and a lot of other information about it and some related issues. When I cite the book below, my references in parentheses will be to an approximate location in the Kindle version.

Shushan has argued that near-death experiences (NDEs) and some related phenomena have had a large role in originating and shaping religions. The book under consideration here focuses on three groups of indigenous religions, ones in North America, Africa, and Oceania. He doesn't limit his examination to NDEs as typically defined, but instead includes a broader range of phenomena, such as shamanic activity. You can watch his interview with Tsakiris for an explanation of what he included and why. Since he covers multiple centuries of material, you can see developments over time, such as what these indigenous groups believed prior to coming into contact with Christianity and other movements, how they interacted with Christian missionaries, how their beliefs persisted and changed afterward, and so on.

He provides examples of testimony from these indigenous people that their religious beliefs originated in or were influenced by phenomena like NDEs. On some occasions, these indigenous groups told Christian missionaries that they knew Christianity was false because of their experiences with such phenomena. Some NDEs were of a broadly Christian nature, and some were of a partly Christian and partly non-Christian nature, but it seems that most were non-Christian or even anti-Christian.

Ed May's Materialism

Alex Tsakiris recently interviewed Stephen Braude. He makes a lot of significant comments during the interview, but a segment I found especially interesting was one about Ed May. You can click on the link just provided to watch that segment on the YouTube video of the interview. Braude's comments about his private interactions with May are worth hearing. You can listen to Tsakiris' interview with May here. And here's a post I wrote about the significance of the interview.

The Negative And Subjective Side Of Near-Death Experiences

Near-death experiences (NDEs) are often cited as evidence against Christianity and other exclusivistic belief systems. Supposedly, NDEs suggest that everybody or almost everybody goes to heaven. The God of NDEs isn't the God of the Bible. And so on.

Alex Tsakiris recently interviewed Penny Sartori, a prominent NDE researcher. A lot of important points were made during the interview, and I recommend listening to the whole thing. But here are some of the highlights, followed by some comments of my own.

The Evidence For Organized Religion Can't Be Ignored

I recently listened to Alex Tsakiris' interview with Leslie Kean, a journalist who's published some books on paranormal phenomena. The books discussed during the program (one on UFOs and one on the afterlife) seem to have a lot of good material, and I've ordered both. I expect to eventually read them, but it may be a while before I get to them. What I want to do in this post is make some comments about the interview.

Kean's book on the afterlife seems to have some overlap with Patricia Pearson's book that came out in 2014, which I reviewed here. There's also some overlap with Tsakiris' interview of Pearson. I'll refer to perspectives like those held by people such as Tsakiris, Pearson, and Kean as a paranormal view of the afterlife.

"Needing To Fend Off The Evangelicals"

Last week, I wrote a couple of posts (here and here) about a recent book on the paranormal by Patricia Pearson. I referred to Alex Tsakiris' interview with Pearson, which hadn't been posted yet. It's now available. Here are some comments she made about how people are responding to her book:

"Certainly based on my experience promoting this book over the last few weeks, I think Americans have their own particular cultural issue here, which is not the same in Canada or in England, and that has to do with kind of needing to fend off the Evangelicals. So the kind of rigidity around engaging in anything spiritual because it might feed ground to Evangelical cause….Well, [the book is] coming out in Germany and in Italy. The Italians are interesting, because they’ve kind of – they are pissed off at the church, but they secretly are deeply still interested in their saints….The other place that it resonates, where I’ve never seen, is in Louisiana. So again, there is some sort of overlay with that kind of Gothic Catholic delight in spirits. And coming out in Germany. And it’s actually become a best seller in England."

The book corroborates some Evangelical beliefs about the paranormal and the afterlife, so I can see why some opponents of Evangelicalism would be wary. But I suspect most people would take the book as an argument against Evangelicalism, since near-death experiences and other paranormal phenomena are so often seen as inconsistent with Evangelical belief. If you encountered somebody citing Pearson's book or material similar to it, how well would you be prepared to respond?

An Interview You Should Listen To And How It Reflects Academia

I recommend listening to a remarkable interview Alex Tsakiris recently did with Patricia Churchland. Why would such a prominent scholar make such dubious claims, argue so poorly, and behave so irresponsibly? Churchland reflects some common problems in academia. Many scholars know significantly less than they suggest they do, don't respond well when challenged, and are astonishingly lacking in their ethical standards.

Christianity And Its Evidence Keep Growing

Alex Tsakiris recently interviewed John Loftus on his Skeptiko podcast. Tsakiris makes some good points, and his comments at the end of the podcast (recounting an email exchange he had with Loftus) are especially worth listening to. Don't just read the transcript. There are significant parts of the program that the transcript doesn't include.

Tsakiris made some of his usual anti-Christian comments. At times, he'll dismiss "Christianity" without qualification. At other points, he refers to something like "fundamentalist Christians". He mentioned inerrancy. Judging by this podcast and his previous comments, I suspect that he's referring to conservative professing Christians in general. It's misleading to refer to conservative Christianity as a whole as "fundamentalism", but I suspect that's what he's doing. He wants to move beyond the disputes between atheism and the type of Christianity he's criticizing. He thinks people are "stuck on stupid" by focusing too much on atheism and traditional Christianity. He thinks work like what Loftus has done has effectively debunked conservative Christianity. He's weary of "silly, empty tomb Christianity kinds of debates". He wants to move on.