Near Death Experiences

Our conversation about heaven and hell moved away from The Great Divorce this past week, and we focused more on Near Death Experiences, or NDEs. There has been a veritable glut of books in the past decade or two of people claiming to have been to heaven or hell – or something else. Many of these people are coming from varying Christian traditions, and they want to tell us that they spent 90 Minutes in Heaven, that Heaven is for Real, or that they spent 23 Minutes in Hell.

Books by Christians on the afterlife are kind of an interesting thing to me. While the Bible talks often enough about seeing visions of God, accounts of disembodied experiences in heaven or hell are pretty much absent. There isn’t much in the Bible that leads us to believe that soul and body are two different substances, so the whole idea that people can have an out of body experience seems to be lacking Biblical support, no matter what near-death.com says. And once you hear some of the stories… Well, let’s just say I’m skeptical at best.

What compels people to write books claiming that they have had experiences in another world? There are four obvious answers. First, they actually experienced what they claim to have experienced. Second, they are lying for personal gain. Third, they could be mad. Fourth, they are mistaken. Maybe they had a vivid dream, or maybe there is some scientific explanation for the experience.

If you’ve ever read an account or someone who claims to have had a NDE, the first possibility seems pretty improbable. There are accounts of demons getting pleasure from torturing people (What happened to hell being punishment for them?), of rainbow horses, of “elevator Jesus,” and so on. Some of these things just seem unlikely; some of them fly in the face of not only reason, but what the little the Bible says the afterlife will be like.

The second claim seems likely enough for me, especially considering how popular these stories have become. There must be a few folks clever enough to watch the increasing popularity of the genre who realize that they could spin a story that people would eat up. And when looking at the literary quality of some accounts, it seems about as easy to jump into as writing romance novels. While the… captivating prose of 23 Minutes in Hell does not necessarily discount the possibility that the narrator actually experienced the things he describes, it certainly does not help his case!

The third option might be possible, but I think it would be fairly unlikely that a mad individual could get published. It’s possible, but very improbable.

The fourth option is the most interesting to me personally. I try to be gracious when considering what people have to say, and this seems like an out of sorts. It is totally possible that, after going to bed at three in the morning, the author of 23 Minutes in Hell simply had a bad dream, rather than being plunged into the literal hell as he claims. He didn’t even have a NDE. Scientific explanations have also been put forward. Studies have linked low oxygen in the brain to the “light” and “tunnel” aspects of NDE stories. There isn’t really anything that can account for the vivid details that some report, but there is certainly the possibility that a few of these options could be blended.

In the end, I am quite skeptical of NDE claims. The probability that they are true is simply quite low. And the circumstances surrounded many of these claims don’t give me much reason to really take them seriously.