Reading Time: 5 minutes “A qualitative and quantitative study of the incidence, features, and aetiology of near death experiences in cardiac arrest survivors.” Resuscitation 48 (2001): 149-156. In my most recent post on Case for a Creator, I mentioned that Lee Strobel referenced a February 2001 paper which allegedly provided proof that people had conscious experiences during the time […]
afterlife
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Rebutting Reasonable Faith: Remembering the Lost
Reading Time: 3 minutes In question #86 of his Reasonable Faith column, William Lane Craig addresses a question from a Christian who’s troubled by one of the most wicked doctrines of that theology, the dogma of Hell. Craig’s correspondent wonders whether the saved will feel compassion for the damned, but also worries that it would be a violation of […]
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Heaven at the Price of Hell
Reading Time: 3 minutes In my essay “Those Old Pearly Gates” on Ebon Musings, I raised what is, to my mind, one of the strongest moral arguments against the traditional monotheist conception of the afterlife: The point is this. How can anyone enjoy Heaven, knowing that while you have eternal bliss there are people experiencing eternal suffering? Unless you […]
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Bright Machines
Reading Time: 6 minutes One of the more important consequences of our society’s biblical illiteracy is that many people continue to believe in the Bible only because they think it is a far better book than it actually is. For example, consider this comment from Greta Christina’s Blog, in which an offended Christian denies that the New Testament says […]
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Popular Delusions IV: Hauntings
Reading Time: 6 minutes John Knott, the owner of Quadrille, a fabric and wall coverings company based in Manhattan, expected surprises when he bought a weekend home in the country, an 1839 Greek Revival house in Kinderhook in Columbia County, N.Y. Inconveniences were bound to crop up — a leaky roof, problematic plumbing, boiler issues. But he was not […]
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Designing the Afterlife
Reading Time: 5 minutes In his book The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis puts a challenge to those who condemn the doctrine of Hell as immoral: “What are you asking God to do?” The apparent reasoning behind this question is that even those who think the idea of Hell is monstrous would be unable to come up with a […]