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Evidence for the Soul and Heaven from Near Death Experiences Credible Catholic CREDIBLE CATHOLIC Big Book - Volume 2 EVIDENCE OF OUR TRANSPHYSICAL SOUL Content by: Fr. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D. CCBB - Volume Two - Evidence of Our Transphysical Soul Credible Catholic Big Book Volume Two Evidence of Our Transphysical Soul Fr. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D. As dictated to Joan Jacoby Edits and formatting by Joey Santoro Editor’s Note: Much of the material presented in this chapter was originally published by Ignatius Press in The Soul’s Upward Yearning: Clues to Our Transcendent Nature from Experience and Reason. It is reprinted with permission. To read more, you can find the book at the following link: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Souls-Upward-Yearning-P1894.aspx © Magis Center 2017 1 CCBB - Volume Two - Evidence of Our Transphysical Soul This Volume supports The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part One - The Profession of Faith NOTE: All teachings in the Credible Catholic materials conform to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) and help to explain the information found therein. Father Spitzer has also included materials intended to counter the viral secular myths that are leading religious people of all faiths, especially millennials, to infer that God is no longer a credible belief. You will find credible documented evidence for God, our soul, the resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and the Catholic Church, as well as spiritual and moral conversion. Part One from the CCC is titled, THE PROFESSION OF FAITH. The first 5 Volumes in the Credible Catholic Big Book and Credible Catholic Little Book fall into Part One. Part Two of the CCC is titled, THE CELEBRATION OF THE CHRISTIAN MYSTERY. This is covered in Volumes 6 through 12. Part Three of the CCC is LIFE IN CHRIST and information related to this topic will be found in Volumes 13 through 17. Credible Catholic Big and Little Book Volumes 18 through 20 will cover Part Four of the CCC, Christian Prayer. The Big Book can also be divided into two major movements – the rational justification for God, the soul, Jesus, and the Catholic Church (Volumes 1 through 6), and life in Christ through the Catholic Church (Volumes 9 through 20). If you would like a preview of this dynamic, please go to Volume 6 (Chapter 7) at the following link – Chapter 7 – Where Have We Come From and Where are We Going? 2 CCBB - Volume Two - Evidence of Our Transphysical Soul We all need to be Credible Catholics. St. Augustine said in his work, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, "Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens and other elements... Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; ...If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven..." If we don’t respond to these secular myths, who will? 3 CCBB - Volume Two - Evidence of Our Transphysical Soul Table of Contents NOTE- References to “section(s)”, throughout all volumes, refer to the “sections” denoted by Roman numerals under each Chapter title. CHAPTER ONE: EVIDENCE OF THE SOUL AND HEAVEN FROM NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCES 7 I. Definitions and Descriptions 8 II. Four Important Studies 12 III. Three Kinds of Verifiable Evidence 18 IV. Response to Physicalist Explanations 22 V. Near Death Experiences, Love, and Resurrection 25 VI. Complementary Evidence of a Soul from Terminal Lucidity 27 CHAPTER TWO: EVIDENCE OF THE SOUL FROM OUR TRANSCENDENTAL DESIRES 31 I. The Basic Argument from Plato to Lonergan 31 II. The Five Transcendental Desires – Considered Individually 32 III. Conclusion 40 IV. The Presence of the Transcendental Desires in Mentally Challenged Individuals 40 CHAPTER THREE: GOD’S PRESENCE TO OUR CONSCIOUSNESS: THE NUMINOUS EXPERIENCE, INTUITION OF THE SACRED, AND CONSCIENCE 43 I. The Numinous Experience – Rudolf Otto 45 II. The Intuition of the Sacred – Mircea Eliade 54 III. Kant and Newman on the Divine Origin of Conscience 64 IV. The Cosmic Struggle between Good and Evil – J.R.R. Tolkein and Carl Jung 71 V. Conclusion: An Initial Conclusion about “the Soul” 78 CHAPTER FOUR: HUMAN INTELLIGENCE VERSUS ARTIFICIAL AND ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE 79 I. Human Intelligence versus Artificial Intelligence 79 II. Human Intelligence versus Animal Intelligence 83 4 CCBB - Volume Two - Evidence of Our Transphysical Soul CHAPTER FIVE: SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 87 I. The Hard Problem of Self-Consciousness 88 II. Sensate Consciousness and Self-Consciousness 94 III. Dualism and Trialism 101 CHAPTER SIX: METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS ABOUT OUR TRANSPHYSICAL SOUL 105 CHAPTER SEVEN: FREE WILL AND ORIGINAL SIN 108 I. The Fall and Original Sin 111 II. The Consequences of Original Sin 113 III. Reconciling Contemporary Science and the Doctrine of Original Sin 116 REFERENCES 124 Please note: All footnotes in this Chapter are done according to the MLA style manual— that is, last name of author, followed by date of publication, followed by page number. For full citations, go to the References at the end of this volume. 5 CCBB - Volume Two - Evidence of Our Transphysical Soul Evidence of Our Transphysical Soul Introduction Christians have always believed in a transphysical soul capable of surviving bodily death because of belief in the apostolic testimony of Jesus’ resurrection and His promise of that resurrection to us. The evidence for this from contemporary historical criteria, the Shroud of Turin, and contemporary scientifically validated miracles is discussed extensively in Volume 3. Yet before we look into the historicity and revelation of Jesus, we will want to examine closely the evidence available to experience and reason from the natural world and our inner world. Though the classical and medieval periods reflected on this evidence, the contemporary age (the 20th and 21st centuries) has brought it to fruition with several new medical and scientific discoveries. This evidence may be grouped into six large categories that do not exhaust the subject:1 1. Evidence of a transphysical soul capable of surviving bodily death from peer-reviewed medical studies of near death experiences amd terminal lucidity (Chapter One). 2. Evidence of our desire for and awareness of five transcendental notions – perfect truth, perfect love, perfect justice-goodness, perfect beauty, and perfect home, all of which point to our transcendental powers and nature (Chapter Two). 3. Evidence of the presence of the Divine to our interior awareness as explored in Rudolf Otto’s study of the numinous experience, Mircea Eliade’s studies of the intuition of the sacred, Immanuel Kant’s and John Henry Newman’s studies of conscience, and Carl Jung’s and JRR Tolkien’s explorations of archetypal myths portraying a cosmic struggle between good and evil (Chapter Three). 4. Evidence of a transcendental dimension of human cognition in heuristic notions required for abstract conceptual ideas and meaningful syntactical language (Chapter Four). 5. Evidence of a transcendental dimension of human cognition required for trans- algorithmic mathematical intuition revealed by Gödel’s Theorem – and its contemporary re-statements (Chapter Four). 6. Evidence of the transphysical nature of human self-consciousness revealed by Chalmers’ hard problem of consciousness as well as the trialistic interactionism of Sir John Eccles, Sir Karl Popper, Dr. Henry Stapp, and Dr. Friedrich Beck. As it turns out, all of the above transcendental characteristics give rise to our capacity for human freedom. Self-consciousness not only enables us to be aware of ourselves, but to choose among two fundamental options to give ourselves self-definition over the course of time: 1 See Spitzer 2015 The Soul’s Upward Yearning for a much more complete treatment of this evidence and some 6 CCBB - Volume Two - Evidence of Our Transphysical Soul 1. Desires toward self-aggrandizement and possession of others and the material world, or 2. Desires toward transcendence, God, others, and the service of love and the good. In the Seventh and final Chapter of this Volume, we will discuss the constituents of our human freedom as well as the impeding of it caused by original sin – the darkening of our freewill after the fall. Yet all is not lost – for Jesus Christ has unleashed the unconditional love and mercy of God, and given us the power of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and in the Church. We will give the evidence and the significance of His redemptive sacrifice and resurrection in Volumes 3&4. Chapter One Evidence of the Soul and Heaven from Near Death Experiences – Back to top Introduction I cite the evidence of near-death experiences with some trepidation, because there are many books written on this subject that are not scientific or based on any clinical, cross-cultural, long term study, but rather on a few anecdotes taken to the extreme. Some of these nonscientific books have rather manipulative agendas, and some are quite cultic in character. These problematic accounts do not mitigate the excellent longitudinal studies that have been carried out by Parnia et al. at Southampton University (2014),2, van Lommel et al., reported in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet,3 the two studies carried out by Kenneth Ring on near-death experiences,4 and his later study of near-death experiences of the blind,5 and Dr. Janice Holden’s analysis of veridical evidence in NDE’s from thirty-nine independent studies.6 There are additional careful longitudinal studies cited in this Chapter,7 as well as many studies reported in the Journal of Near-Death Studies published by the International Association for Near-Death Studies (peer- reviewed).8 Before responding to physicalists’ objections, we will want to clarify some terms and circumstances surrounding this remarkable entryway into the realm of survival of bodily death and the existence of transphysical consciousness.
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