Draft:Afterlife Apologetics

Afterlife Apologetics is a branch of Christian Apologetics that seeks to defend such doctrines as the existence of God, a personal afterlife, and substance dualism (existence of a soul that can separate from the body), by reflecting upon studies of visions, and comparing them to biblical teachings. These visions are reported while awake, in vivid dreams, and in conjunction with both near-death and deathbed experiences.

Defining and Classifying Visionary Experiences

Ancient Through Medieval Times

Gregory Shushan documents how both ancient and indigenous cultures often cited visionary experiences (especially near-death experiences) as justification for their afterlife beliefs.

In the Judeo-Christian scriptures, the existence and concern of God for people was often communicated through visions: such as appearing/speaking to Adam, Abraham, Mary, Joseph, Jesus, etc. Biblical visions with implications for the afterlife include Jesus' Transfiguration, featuring appearances by the long-deceased Moses and Elijah, Stephen's vision at his death, Paul's vision of heaven/paradise, and John's many visions of a heavenly sphere in the book of Revelation.

Carol Zaleski documents how Medieval Christians referenced near-death and other visionary experiences in defense of the Christian faith.

Deathbed Experience Studies in Modern Times A survey of over 17,000 people in the 1890s by 410 interviewers in Great Britain, led by Henry and Nora Sidgwick of Cambridge University, asked people if they had seen, while wide awake, someone who wasn't physically there. About 10% responded "Yes." For two to four percent of the population, the person seen had just died. Comparing those who had experienced such an apparition within a 24 hour period (12 hours before to 12 hours after) of death to census data, they determined that this occurred 440 times as much as chance should allow. Thus, they concluded that chance could not explain the phenomenon. The primary alternative to the afterlife hypothesis as an explanation was that some sort of "super ESP" was occurring, whereby a dying person sent a message prior to death, via ESP, that was extraordinarily vivid and convincing, but for some reason arrived later than expected.

Physicist Sir William Barrett wrote three books on deathbed visions from 1908 to 1926, concluding that they provided evidence for the afterlife.

French astronomer Camille Flammarion requested, via three French journals, for readers to share their own deathbed phenomena, giving him 1824 responses that he examined in his book, . For the rest of his life, reports kept pouring in, often from very well-respected, high profile people. Thus, he reflected upon their reports in three other books, which he wrote in his final years. Having spent a lifetime studying over 4,000 reports of such phenomena, he argued that they provided strong evidence for the afterlife.

His examinations of these experiences yielded about 16 data points that supported the afterlife hypothesis. For example, many of the crisis apparitions occurred within minutes of the person's death. Furthermore, often more than one person experienced the apparition. Sometimes, the vision occurred months after the person's death, providing evidence that the deceased retained a conscious existence well beyond the death.

Recent Deathbed Studies Studies of deathbed visions has revived in recent years. An ongoing study in a New York Hospice facility, reported in both medical journals and a book by one of the researchers, argued that such experiences should not be explained away as either hallucinations or mere dreams. And since they were reported by over 80% of the dying patients, they could hardly be explained away as anomalies.

While cases of terminal lucidity have been documented in medical literature through the years, a pilot study attempted to provide a larger sample of cases and a more consistent and thorough interview scheme.

Recent Near-Death Studies

Criticism from Naturalistic Perspectives

Criticism from Spiritual Perspectives