Not a Lot to Pin Our Faith on

In essays I wrote in previous years, I wrote about how almost all the evidence I knew about Near Death Experiences (NDEs) could be explained as creations of the brain. NDEs are visions that some people have as they are dying, and which they may remember if they happen to be resuscitated from the brink of death. Many people think they have actually seen into heaven. While NDEs are not random delusions, I concluded that they do occur within the brain, and are the product of natural selection.

The only thing that an evolutionary approach would NOT be able to explain is if a person, during his or her NDE, actually SAW something that he or she could NOT possibly have known about. Of all the many NDE stories, very few of them have such a component.

I will now tell you one story of a NDE vision that might qualify as a true spiritual vision. As a Christian agnostic, I am skeptical of this, but am always open to a universe that is bigger than what I imagined.

As described in the April, 2016 National Geographic, “A head-on collision landed Tricia Barker, then a college student, in an Austin, Texas hospital, bleeding profusely, her spine broken. She says she felt herself separate from her body during surgery, covering near the ceiling as she watched her monitor flatline. Moving through the hospital corridor, she says, she saw her stepfather, struggling with grief, buy a candy bar from a vending machine; it was this detail …[which] he’d told no one about, that made Barker believe her movements really happened.” Barker has a website devoted to telling her story, and to urging her readers to devote their lives to helping people less fortunate than ourselves.

If Barker’s story can be verified beyond any doubt, then it would prove the existence of a spiritual realm. Most of us want to believe this. I reluctantly remain skeptical, however. While I have not searched all the websites, I have looked at all of the ones that showed up on Google until I started getting hits for “Patricia” and “Barker” separately. All of the websites simply repeat her story. I have not seen any scientific investigation of her claims. I do not believe she is lying. But the conclusion—that she really saw her stepfather in the corridor while her spirit was floating around—is based entirely on the assumption that her stepfather could not possibly have told her what he had done. He may not remember having told her; he might have let some information slip to her.

It is a fascinating story. But I am not willing, at this time, to restructure my view of the cosmos to accommodate this one story. But I hope you agree with me that these are the kinds of stories we need to watch for and to verify before either accepting or rejecting the existence of a spiritual realm. There is more in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.