In my last column piece, I’ve tackled on the scientific evidence of God’s existence by demonstrating Fr. Robert Spitzer’s (A Catholic priest and scientist) argument that “in our fine-tuned universe, there are no blind forces at work but a super calculating and intelligent God who’s responsible for the physical constants that are precisely set to the right values.”
Now, in this piece, I’d like to continue on Fr. Spitzer’s scientific argument – this time on the existence of the human soul, culled from peer-reviewed scientific or medical studies.
Let me first segue my point a bit. From the theoretical or rational perspective, we can demonstrate the existence of the soul with the following argument:
1. We generally think of or understand the soul as something “immortal, intangible, spiritual, or transcendent” – that is, beyond the material and physical.
2. From experience or empirical evidence, we have the capability to “know” (consciousness or awareness) and to “reflect, analyze, or decide” (free will). The effects or products of our “knowing and willing” are not material or physical but “immaterial, intangible and immortal” – e.g. ideas, knowledge, love, goodness, beauty, truth, etc.
3. Ergo, these operative functions or properties of our “knowing and willing” can only come from something immaterial, spiritual and immortal in the human person, which is the soul.
Rewind to our title thesis: Scientific evidence of the soul.
From the scientific aspect, Fr. Spitzer tries to argue that the human soul empirically exists based on the multitude of scientific or medical studies about near-death experiences (NDEs).
According to Fr. Spitzer, there’s no dearth of scholarly peer-reviewed scientific studies implying the soul’s existence in near-death experiences: Samuel Parney, Southampton University, Journal of Resuscitation; Dr. Pin van Lommel, The Lancet Medical Journal; Bruce Greyson, University of Virginia Medical School; Dr. Stuart Hameroff and Sir Roger Penrose, Quantum Theory of Consciousness, Oxford University; Dr. Raymond Moody, Life after Life; and many more.
From all these studies or near-death experience, the common accounts of what people go through are:
1. They actually exit their physical body, rise up, and they can see from above the scene of the resuscitation; they can see their own bodies lying down.
2. They are conscious or aware of what is going on and of what the doctors and nurses are thinking; they want to communicate with the doctors or nurses (“hey, I’m not dead”) but they cannot.
3. They go through a tunnel or a passageway of some sort.
4. They come out on the other side into an incredibly brilliant and warm, and comforting light – in which they experience pure love.
5. They are greeted or assisted by the spirits of their loved ones, who appear to be “timeless” or “ageless.”
6. In the presence of an enlightened being of “complete compassion, love, and light,” they are afforded a panoramic review of their life.
While such experiences may be adjudged as merely anecdotal by some scientists, Fr. Spitzer points out that the enormity of radical data in these vast studies cannot simply be ignored.
“What is fundamental in these near-death experiences is the survival of consciousness after bodily death, along with emotion, self-awareness, and memory, which points out the existence of the human soul,” Fr. Spitzer said.
What is radically intriguing for Fr. Spitzer is that, from these near-death studies, even people who have been blind throughout their entire life can impressively give accurate account of their immediate surroundings during their near-death episode.
“This was demonstrated by the Kenneth Ring studies (Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind: A Study of Apparent Eyeless Vision, Kenneth Ring, Ph. D.) wherein 81 percent of people who were blind from birth are seeing for the very first time when they’re clinically dead…How in the world can they give accurate vertical data of an entire scene that is going on?
“Like in the case of Bradley Burroughs, 16 years old, and blind from birth. In his near-death account, he says he zoomed right outside of the hospital walls, and there he was standing outside in the snow. He didn’t feel anything but he could see the tracks of the train in the snow. Then just about a minute later, the train comes by and it’s got a huge sign on the track with an arrow pointing to the right. Then the train went down those tracks and went off into the grove of trees. He’s describing this perfectly. Of course, you can coordinate the train schedule with the time of Bradley’s clinical death, and it was 100 percent accurate. How on earth did the blind kid do it? By hallucination? No, he didn’t hallucinate, because hallucinations are notoriously inaccurate,” Fr. Spitzer explained.
Hurray, Fr. Spitzer! ‘Twas Bradley’s soul, no doubt.