Our guest today was one of the first Christian academics to study, assess, and advance the case for the afterlife from near-death experiences. How has the data and debate shifted over the past few decades? And why does he consider the evidence from near-death experiences so strong that naturalistic explanations quote utterly fail to explain evidential near-death experience cases? Our guest today, Dr. Gary Harbors is back, but he's going to talk about a forthcoming essay he has that hasn't been released yet on evidential near-death experiences for the Blackwell Companion that advances the case for near-death experiences in a way I have not seen yet. Thanks for coming on the show. Glad to be with you, Sean. Dr. Shawn. Yeah, glad to be with you. Oh, man. I appreciate that. Well, let's let me just start with this question for you. You've been studying near-death experiences. well over three decades. If I asked you to give me an example of just one or two that you find most compelling, I know it's a cumulative case, but one what are one or two that especially give you pause that you think are compelling? Okay, before I do that, would it be okay if I give you I have five different kinds of NDE evidence. If it'll be helpful for me to give those five, you'll know which ones I'm picking out out of which categories. categories, I think. Okay, real quickly, the five I argue this in all three of my large NDE uh essays uh chapters. Okay, some of the evidence is in the room. It's from and it's all good uh in the let's say operating room, in the hospital room, in the house. It's it's it's in quarters where you don't see outside. Second is evidence at a distance. And if you can believe this, the longest case I have found is an NDE case where evidence was given. You got to be ready for this. 1250 miles away. And I have a number of cases that are reported from 20 and 30 miles away. But that's outside the room. Third third kind, I argue, are indies and the blind. And these are people who either blind from birth or like minutes afterwards. In other words, by the time they went home from the hospital, they were blind. And the only time they have seen anything in their life is during the NDE. And darn it, the minute it's over, they go back to being blind again. So, their only sight is during the NDE. Okay. Fourth and fifth, I call Twilight Zone cases. Um there are over a hundred evidenced and collected cases by a medical doctor of healthy people experiencing the sick and dying person's NDE. They went with them together. It it's it's funny. I I'll make up a case, but it'll be like if the nurse is by the bedside of the dying person and while he or she is attending to the person, the person dies. Well, you think the person who died, if we follow this out, is going to go up and so on. But all of a sudden, the nurse finds herself going up with the patient. And she goes up and she gets to the pearly gates. Ah, you know, just picture she's talking. I'm being physicious, but she's talking to St. Peter. And St. Peter says to the two of them, "He's dead. He's staying. You're not dead. Get out of here." And he sends her back to the room. But I it's it's okay for if all you have is a healthy person talking about the experience. That's pretty decent evidence of itself. But sometimes the healthy person who goes finds out some other evidence before they go. And so that doubles the evidential value of the healthy person going with the person who will not return to Earth. The last one which is truly Twilight Zone is made up of cases of people, you know, every everybody here is near death and when they die they're surrounded by a half dozen relatives. And here's dad, he died 10 years ago. Here's mom. she just died two years ago. Here's my aunt. Here's my best friend. He was killed in a car accident when he was 16, you know, and these people are around them. But somebody, and we prefer it to be somebody who's been dead for a while, let's say your dad's been dead for 10 years, and the dad tells the person something that's very important, but nobody in the family knows it. And when they come back, they solve this riddle in the family that's been plaguing them for 10 years because it seems to them that their deceased father gave them the information. They brought it back. I call that one Twilight Zone. And I called the shared experiences Twilight Zone. Then we got the blind and in and out of the rule. So those are five. Now that's helpful. Now, before we get into your example, I have some objections I want to run by you that relate to those different categories. So, that's helpful to break it up that way, but just tell us one or two that really gives you pause. It's like, man, it'd be hard to explain this one away naturally. Okay. Um, the one that I would Okay, I would The one I would vote for, now when I say that I vote for, I'm going to say, "Wait a minute. What do you want me to say? Because do you want me to get one from category one tooth? Maybe category four means more to you than one. So I'm better off using one four. In other words, different strokes are different folks. I'll try to use one or two. There's so many of them. My latest essay lists over 500 evidential cases. I don't list them all. I just give a number and then I give a bunch of them in the essay. And so sometimes I'll just ask the person, "Which of these categories do you prefer?" And I'll pick one from that category. Here's the one I've heard recently that if somebody has a reputation, I want to hear it. Okay, this is in print. Um, at Ohio State University. So, we're going to put this in the operating room of a very prominent university, especially if you're a football fan. Anyway, at Ohio State University, a man was being brought in from another hospital who was already clinically dead. They brought him in because he had to have a serious surgery that the other hospital couldn't finish. And it was an open heart, open aorta surgery. They had to do a heart and aorta. and any slip, any anything like was one doctor said, a nick on the side of the heart and the person would bleed out. It's that touchy, but you have a heart and an aorta. Okay, when the guy's in, he's clinically dead. They put some instruments on him and the instruments were either flat or not very good, but they're going to have to put this guy out immediately to operate. So, they use a procedure that 20 years ago you wouldn't hear very much about, but now it's getting to be pretty common. And what they did was they had to stop his heart. Now, let me just pause there for a moment. Stop his heart. In experiments, when the heart stops, especially when it stops by what's called ventricular fibrillation, that's the kind of heart attack where the guy falls on his face and never walk wakes up again. It's dead right away. It's that's why it's called cardiac arrest. Okay. And anywhere from 14.5 to 23 seconds later in many uh uh experimental uh medical essays uh you are brain dead within 15 to 25 seconds after heart stoppage. So if you report something, if you die at time, you know, 0 and and you present evidence that's past the 30 secondond mark, it is truly remarkable because it is flatrain, flat heart data. And this is accepted by almost everybody in the field. I I have a footnote on my notes on how many people say that brain stoppage comes 14.5 to 23 seconds later. Sean, my my footnote is like 20 25 lines long. That's how much experimental evidence there is for that point. All right. So, this this guy's dead. He's already clinically dead. They stop his heart and before they can do anything to him, he's dead dead cuz it's more than 30 seconds. All right. And you're only supposed to keep a person in that state. the anesthesiologist, the one who's doing the reporting, the one who's there, he says, "You're only supposed to keep somebody in that state for 50 50 minutes. No more than 50 minutes. They couldn't fix this guy up in 50 minutes." So flat brain, flat heart, and they didn't get him out of the state for 92 minutes. He was double the maximum length. He was already clinically dead when he came in. They killed him, you know, stopped his heart. And his head, by the way, had blocks of ice on the side of it to keep the brain cooled down. A ve, very touchy thing. And so they did the surgery and the main surgeon wanted to stop a few times and the anesthesiologist said, "No, no, no, keep pushing. Keep p let's do it again. Let's do it again." And so they finished it and it was successful. The anesthesiologist 2 days later, so it's very soon, it's not two years later, two months later, two days later, he goes into ICU and the guy is there and he says, "Hey, Dr. So ando and the anesthesiologist looks down and his scrubs are on. He didn't have a he doesn't have his name tag on." He said, "How did you know my name?" And the by the way, he expected to find that the patient had died. But the patient said to him, "I'd know you anywhere." because when they wanted to stop the experiment, you're the one that kept me alive and I want to I want to appreciate your saving me. And the guy goes, "Yeah, okay, that's interesting." And he's trying to think about that. And and the and the doctor asks him like, "Well, how long were you up there? How much did you see?" And this and the guy goes kind of humorously, he goes, "Well, what can a guy do when he's up above his body and can't go very much? I I I just watched you guys. And by the way, he says, "You know those three lights that are over the operating table?" And the anesthesiologist said, "Yeah." He said, "Up on the back side of them, where you can't see them from the floor, on the back side there are serial numbers." And a note in this study said, "These serial numbers are usually 7 to 10 numbers and letters long." And there were three of them. And the guy, so he had got his pen and paper up and the guy gave him all three numbers. Oh my goodness. But the doctor himself, not somebody else, the doctor himself went and got a small step ladder, went up himself, couldn't quite get the light turned around to get the number. So nurse had to come up and show him because they have to clean the lights all the time. So he got him. He copied down all three numbers and the guy got all three numbers correct. So you say 7 to 10 letters and numbers times three, it's at least 21 letters and numbers and the guy got them all correct. The doctor they asked, so then this doctor went on and he went into a long discussion with cynical people. The discussion is over aundred pages long. I went through the entire thing and skeptics were going, "Doc, no offense, but you're full of it." Um, that can be explained easily. Um, the guy came in the room first and he saw what was up there. Yeah. Right. They're going to let him in the operating room. He's going to be on a ladder. No one's going to catch anything. Right. And he's going to get these numbers. And the doc, the anesthesiologist said, "Hey, buddy. You blew it." When he came in, he was he was um clinically dead. He died the rest of the way after we stopped his heart. This guy was dead dead. Um, try try to come up with a thesis. And so the skeptics were just, you know, how atheists sometimes get. These guys were like angry and kind of going off on him. And the and the doctor would always be polite and say, you know, I I I want to thank you for that question. Probably thinking it was stupid to himself, but he thought he all he said was every time that's polite. I I I I appreciate it. And three times in that 100page interview, three times the anesthesiologist describes getting that little ladder, going up on it, finding the numbers himself. And and the skeptic would say, "You went up there yourself." The doctor said, "I went up there myself." And he tells the story three times, and at the end it just kind of tails off. Now, I find that I find that essay I have to admit within reason almost irrefutable. The guy was dead. He was clinically dead to start with and then dead dead when the surgery started. 90 minutes dead. And he repeats the numbers. Um, I like that one a lot. Oh my god. That's that's pretty recent. It's not in the two I sent you. It's in another two that I just wrote elsewhere. And I put that story in there. I have not seen that story. Let Let's stick with that one for right now. That's a pretty dramatic one to start with. It is. I want to I want to shift and ask if you have because you've been writing on this for like three decades plus. How many people have told you personal stories about this? How many people reach out and do like maybe just one jump out of one that someone's told you in person that you know? And you can change the details to protect people. But so I guess two-part question. How many have people emailed you and told you? Is it hundreds? Is it thousands? Have you lost count? And maybe just tell us one that you remember from that. You know, not only emails. I speak on this topic a lot. And so people come up and give me their stories in person. So together, hundreds. Um I've heard hundreds of stories. We've got we've got three or four of these in our own family. I I think that almost every family has cases like this in their own family if they'll look around and ask people what's going on. But here's a here's a fun one. I was lecturing in Tennessee and a large church and a family member, a guy came up to me and he said, "My name's so and so." He said, "Here, I'll give you my email and my name." And he writes it down for me. He said I think he said my cousin his wife was there. Our cousin uh is a and again I'll change some of the details but um he was like a deacon in a large Baptist church in that area in Tennessee and the guy had a has had a bunch of heart attacks in his life and he had one and when he came back he said he was in hell. that the Baptist deacon was in hell. So just just to start the story, just to start the story, you want to make a smart comment like couldn't have h couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, you know, like that. Right. Right. Well, so the it makes the guy pretty nervous, makes him wonder what's going on. And years later, he had another heart attack and another and he goes to heaven. The same guy. So, he's got a hell case and a heaven case. Same guy. And this guy standing there, he says, "Here, his name is Jim, whatever it is. Here's his phone number." And he writes his phone number down for me. Sean, you know something? I had so many evidential indes. If believe this or not, I never called the guy. I still have his name and number in my most my favorite Bible that I do my devotional readings in. His name and number I see it all the time and I go, "What a dummy." I never called them. But but that was a crazy story. About 21% of all reported Indees are hell cases. That's right. And there are two doctors that I'm aware of too that say about 50% of their cases were hell cases. That's really debatable on the evidence, but I think 21 is pretty high because if you're a deacon at a Baptist church and you think you went to hell, first of all, you'd be scared to death. Secondly, you wouldn't want to tell anybody because that makes you a loser. Exactly. So, the number's going to be a lot larger than 21. So, anyway, that guy had both. Gary, I could tell a ton of stories. I won't fill a time, but I was sitting in a Starbucks and uh Starbucks I normally don't work at and a pastor I had never seen at that Starbucks. I usually see him across town. I was sitting there working on lectures for my resurrection class, and I was researching near-death experiences. pastor comes in, just sits down, looks at me, goes, "Can I share with you a vision and a near-death experience I had?" I said, "Sure." He shared it at the end. I gave him all this data. He's like, "How do you know this?" I said, "Cuz I'm preparing a lecture on this right now." That I mean, that is one example of so many. One happened to me this past week. An agnostic who I was talking with about a week ago, had an out-of- body experience and just completely shook him up. So, I've talked about this more. I've shared about this more and start hearing stories. I can only imagine given that you've written on this since the early 90s and speak more on this than I do, how many people reach out to you. That's incredible. Now, you started writing your book, your first book with JP was called Beyond Death in 1992, right? I mean m I have a ton of questions about this but how would you assess the case for near-death experiences now versus when you wrote 30ome years ago that first chapter in that book and let me back it up briefly that book is 92 I've been studying NDE since 72 just before I finished my PhD okay so so what is that 30 40 over 50 years wow and and so I've had a lot of time to do a lot of it's it's changed a lot but the essay you have from Discovery Institute Press you know uh Bill Demsky and Steven Meyer and those guys up at they just did a book on dualism and they asked me to do a chapter on evidential indes for this book if any dualism and my editor we each had personal editors assigned to us from Discovery and I had a physicist assigned to me like most of the people at Discovery are and at I got to know this guy quite well after working with him for a long time. And at the end of our our dialogue, I said, "Hey, uh, let me try something on you." I said, "I I'm not trying to make you angry. I don't think there's any chance of that." He was a really nice guy. I said, "I'm not trying to make you angry, but let me just tell you something at the end. Here's my view." I said, "You work with intelligent design and fine-tuning." Yes. That's your specialty. Yes. All right. I just want to make a comment. He said, "Go for it." I said, 'I think there's more evidence for NDEs than there is for either intelligent design or fine-tuning. Wow, that's a pretty And I just said it without even being positive I could break it up. I I mean back it up. I just said it like you'd say something to a friend, you know, like try to get them going and and he he said after working with you through your chapter, he said, "I'm not sure I would argue with you." Wow. Now, now to me, for a specialist, a physicist, that was really major. One more example. I've got a buddy got a he's got a PhD in analytic philosophy. Really, really sharp. And one of the things he does is evaluate arguments by percentages, but he's really, really strict. Christians are going to be surprised when he when he tells you about your favorite argument for Christianity, where he puts it, and it's going to be very low because he's he's a Christian, but he's very strict on this. And I asked him to give me I said where do you put intelligent design and finetuning and where do you put this and where do you put that and I'm giving these different ones but I'll just give you those two. I said where do you put evidence for fine-tuning and intelligent design. He said about 70. Now I would put it a lot higher than that but he's very very strict. He puts it at 70. I said where do you put near-death experiences? He said 75. I said, "Is anything higher than near-death experiences?" He said, "Well, we'd have to talk about the resurrection, but right now in our discussion, no, nothing's higher than my 75 for NDEs." So, there's a second example of evaluation of the ND evidence. And that was just a few months ago, by the way. It was pretty recent. You know, I did that video recently with a hundred uh apologists. I asked their tough top arguments. Third was Jesus. Second moral argument, number one, creation. The only one who said like near-death experiences was Steve Miller, whom, you know, you did the for he's been on the show a bunch of times. I'm starting to move that direction more and more myself as possibly the most compelling account at least for the afterlife that challenges naturalism. That's one reason why I keep revisiting this on this channel because I think people need to wake up and consider it. Now, give me some numbers. You have this like in terms of the chapter you sent me uh and that you've done on near-death experiences, the ones that are still forthcoming in the Blackwell uh companion. By the way, these are top academic non-Christian secular presses asking you to publish this. What are some of the latest numbers and how does it compare to some time ago? Well, I the one I sent you from the earlier one from Blackwell was like 2016 or 2018. The one from Discovery Institute is only about I'd have to look at the date uh probably a year or two old. Um the third one hasn't come out yet and that's Blackwell. Okay. What makes the third one different is I was asked to do an argu I was asked to do an essay and I was given a good amount of pages on arguments for an afterlife. Arguments for an afterlife, not just NDEs, arguments for afterlife. And I did resurrection NDEs. I did those two. And then like my buddy Steve Miller, um I did deathbed visions and postdeath visions. That's where the husband and and sometimes as high as 75%, sometimes a lot lower. Uh where spouses see their spouse, but there's no there's no way you could say the person wasn't dead yet cuz the person's already been buried and they're in the ground. And and that night, this is a real story. That night, the Baptist pastor, whose son told me the story, who's also a Baptist pastor with two doctorates, he told me his dad went in the bedroom that night and mom was standing at the foot of his bed. She didn't say anything, but she was standing there. And when you're married for a long time, you can read expressions, and the expression on her face said, "Don't worry about me. Everything's cool." Now, so I asked this pastor guy who explained it to me, his dad. I said, "Your dad's pretty strict about what he'll count for evidence in other fields, goofy fields like uh post-death visions and indies, right?" Yeah. It take a lot for my dad to believe. I said, "All right. Well, let me ask you a question. Could you talk your dad out of having seen your mom at the foot of his bed?" He said, "There's no possible way." He said, "Dad knows she was in the room." So that's a postdeath vision. What I call post-death vision. Some people call it other names, but so I did all four of those. But from the first essay you have, I I listed that I had a list, I said that I had a list of 300 evidential indies. That's right. When I wrote the third one, which hasn't come out yet, my list went up to over 500. So Wow. Over 500 evidential indies alone. This is not the This is not the deathbed and post death. So, the evidence is multiplying like crazy. And I've got a book on my shelf over here. It's a by a medical doctor and every article in the book was every essay was published in a medical journal. So, we're talking pretty tough stuff here. He estimates as the book begins. I'd have to I'd have to check how wide geographically this was, but he said as nearly as they can tell, there have been over there have been 20 million near-death sightings in the world in the last few years. I don't know if that was America. I don't know if that was the West. I don't know if that was the whole world. 20 million. And um that that's quite a number cuz it it it offsets that critical like this a critic who says, "Well, listen buddy, I don't make theories based off five or 10 cases that you want to throw out there. These things are so rare they can't work their way into a theory." I go, "How's 20 million sound? You like the Do you like the number 20 million?" "Well, I never heard of those." Well, so much less for you not looking at them. I mean, they're out there. So, they're very very common. And like I said, the evidential ones up to about at least from from what I know 500. So you've been using the term evidential near-death experience. And clearly you wouldn't think that those 20 million can be documented in an evidentially supportive absolutely not manner. Clarify for us what you mean by an evidential NDE. Well, in my five categories, in the room, out of the room, death, uh I mean the the deaf, I I said it wrong. The blind, then those who share the experience and those who have that Twilight Zone, Dad told me something. He died 10 years ago. If you go across all the categories, I would say I look for cases that yeah, I have a few in the list of 500 that are nice little comments that are kind of evidential, but not real powerful. I'd say of the real powerful evidential ones, there's a lot. There could be 200. I mean, really, really highly evidenced. Um, I can tell you one of the the shared ones. Okay, hang on before we come to the shared one. The the way I understand what you mean by an evidential near-death experience is that the person has information that they could not have had either in that location or that physical state that they bring back which demonstrates that there's at least some continued consciousness after the grave and we're not our bodies. So for me, when I hear a lot of stories, I I actually believe most people because like I people are not making these stories up. Some people do. They're very reluctant to share them. They think you're going to think they're crazy. They transform their lives. So I tend to believe people when they tell me, but there's only evidential significance when somebody is blind and they report something they can't normally see. they know something at a distance or they have information when the brain is stopped, come back and tell us about it. That's what you mean by evidential near-death experience. Did I get that right? Yeah. They they they get evidence that they would not have known one second before that near-death thing that sent them into a spiral, the heart attack, the whatever, they would not have known on their own. Now, some of these are backed up by police reports. you know, they see the accident in the parking lot and and they can put it together and they know you passed out at 12:10. They know from the police report the accident happened at 12:40. We didn't get you situated till 2:10 and the the the accident the parking lot happened in that frame while you were out on the floor with no windows in the room. That kind of stuff. When you put those now, that's not a real case. That's just something I'm giving example. when you can fit the evidence inside the especially I like brain dead cases. So if I get a if I get brain dead cases with evidence I tend to like I tended to like cases at a distance but when you hear cases like the three numbers in the back of the light or the woman who was OCD who reported the 12digit number on the type top of the over everybody's head machine. Um, here's here's a quickie. A guy was up above his body and he said, "There's a quarter up there. It's a 1982 quarter." And everybody goes, "That's pretty interesting. You saw the date? I saw it clearly." So he comes back and I guess this guy was kind of a skeptic. And later when his doctor came in, he said to the doctor, "Hey doc, you could do me a huge favor if you would go up on the ladder and get that quarter. I'll tell you where it is. if you can get the ladder, it means so much to me when I tell the story that it was a doctor that got it and not a janitor, let's say. The guy goes, "All right, I'll do it." He gets a letter and goes up there. Now, you could say if it's a 1982, the first two letters are first two numbers are going to be either 19 or 20. That's going to be 50/50. But what about the 80? It won't even be 50/50. What about the 82? Well, even if you hit two numbers in a row, that that's pretty decent. But the guy told him what the date was. The guy went up got the quarter was 1982. That's not like 12 digits or the guy with the three digit the three 10digit numbers on the light. But even little things like that, there's a number of there's a couple quarter stories. There's a penny story. I've got two cases that people told me where they were putting the person in the ambulance. The ambulance was the person was up above their body while they moved the body into the ambulance and they saw the number on the top of the ambulance. You know what you use for helicopters when the ambulances have to be tracked? They properly gave the number on top of the ambulance. So that's probably a three-digit number. I think both cases they were three-digit numbers and the patient up above the body. The patient's out. They're not going to be standing up looking on top of the ambulance. Yeah. And those are three-digit numbers. So a lot of the number ones I think are pretty cool. So that makes a lot of sense. And I'm actually been reading the chapter in your volume on the resurrection volume one evidences. In the back there's an appendex on near-death experiences. And one of the first things you say is one of the most common objections I hear and I was not aware of this until I read your chapter is that critics will say, "Well, we should set up experiments where people could only view things from above, like in hospital rooms." And then if they had that information like numbers you described then and the patients don't know that the stuff is hidden up there that would confirm it. You start off this chapter by saying there's multiple I think you say between one and maybe two dozen cases like you've just described of people being able to report specific details and numbers from a position they could not have been able to see from below. So that objection, can we say that one has sufficiently been responded to? Well, the critics, the critics like that objection for this reason. What they do is they put pads, you know, you know, computer pads or computers up above and they put random numbers that switch every few seconds. Uh I think there's been one case of a person reporting that and it's and there were a bunch of cooperating hospitals that put these things up there and nobody's really has really done that. My answer to that is uh let's use a little Plato here. If you're up above your body and everybody says it's an awesome thing, it's like look at this world around me. I feel wonderful. What? I'm not looking for numbers on a computer up in the air. But even so, I think that that Well, you didn't you didn't have any people reporting those numbers. Well, tell me how the three numbers in the lights got there. Tell me how the 12digit number got there. the 1982 quarter. A few other numbers. How did the two on the top of the ambulance? How did those where did those come from? Uh well, I don't know, but nobody saw the computer. Uh you know, it's more significant to me that they the three numbers in the back of the light at 7 to 10 digits each is more significant to me than a random number on a computer because I don't think somebody would be going, "Darn, there's a computer." It just doesn't make sense that you'd be looking at that up there. If you look at it platonically, they're just happy to I think the inter I think the intermediate state Peter Crrafe the um Aristotilian philosopher is not a Plonist but he makes a comment about the intermediate state. He says Plato's right as far as he went. In other words, this is an accurate description of the intermediate state. And if you're in this new state where people just describe it as being fantastic, you're just not looking around for data. But if you're looking down on the doctors and the number on top of this sphere or the quarter over here is in your line of sight, that's different. You report it because it's part of your experience. You're not, you know what I mean? You're not shopping around. That's a common naturalistic objection. A common theist or Christian objection is that near-death experiences should be held at bay because they lead towards a kind of universalism and they lean towards a kind of new age. What's your take on that uh concern? I have several critiques and they're in those essays you talk about. Um the first one I'll tell you I don't even know which one to give first. I'll tell you the one that I give uh I'll give the most weight to when I talk about evidential indes. I should have included this in my definition. I'm talking about this with almost no exceptions. this worldly events. It's the it's the accident in the parking lot. It's the number on the ambulance out in the parking lot. It's things out there in this world. The heavenly cases, you know, the Buddhas, Buddhists probably saw Buddha and the and the Hindus probably saw Shiva and or Krishna more likely than Shiva. and uh uh Jews see angels that kind of objection and that the conclusion is see it's all over the world. Uh you mentioned Steve Miller, good guy. I did a forward for one of his last books and Steve took a 100 consecutive cases of NDEs in an international NDE file. And what he wanted to know was he he kept going till he got 100 cases, but he was looking for people who said they went to heaven and they saw a person and they gave a name for that person. By the way, this is my second response. My my first one is I don't count any heavenly data because it's not backed up. I should have finished that first critique. If you say you saw Jesus, I go that's really nice and you may have. Unfortunately, I'm not going to list that. I'm an empiricist. There's no data that you saw that and I'll just listen to the story and be happy about it. But I don't take angels and Shiva and I I don't I don't believe those things at all. I don't think they work. And if they don't work, there's no universalism argument. But Steve Miller's argument is this. He took a hundred of these cases. Now, Sean, my my memory, I mean, I I'll be off a person or two here, but if I remember correctly, no Hindu mentions seeing a Hindu god. Buddha's name, I think, was mentioned one time, but it wasn't in a I saw Buddha comment. It was a I'm a Buddhist, comma, you know, I'm just giving an example. But he didn't say he saw Buddha. So, you have no mentions of Buddha, Krishna. Nobody said they saw Muhammad. Of course, he's not the son of God. I mean, I realize that Muslims don't claim that. Sure. But nobody saw Muhammad, but 20 of the hundred people said they saw Jesus, what's interesting there is that a number of them were not Christians. That's right. And so if 20 see Jesus and you got zero or one Buddhist, zero Hindus, zero Muhammad, but but several people including non-Christians are seeing Jesus. That seems to me and Steve, this is Steve's point. Steve says it's a powerful argument for Christianity, not for universalism, because Jesus is the most common figure. I think that's a great comeback, too. But I still like the first one, until you give me data, I am not I'm not going to make a point about you seeing Jesus or something else. Now, someone will say at that point a skeptic in the crowd will say something critically to me or kind of costically and he'll go, "Oh, but I bet you like the hell cases being that you're from Liberty." You know, that kind of comment. And I'll say, "Okay, good. You would think I should believe the hell cases cuz it fits my theology. Let me surprise you. I don't accept the hell cases either." What I mean by don't accept them is I say all those are possible. You saw Jesus, maybe. So you went to hell maybe. So you were in heaven maybe. So but I don't have any data so I cannot include it in my theory. So those are the two biggies I would do up there. No evidence for what people you see. And number two, Steve's experiment I think is pretty cool that people are seeing Jesus even when they're not Christians. That's really helpful. So, oh yeah, I was just going to clarify for people that you're not saying all the accounts are wrong, but we bring interpretation and we can't confirm any people's experiences of who they saw or they didn't see. So, it's not evidential data to advance what the afterlife is like. Nonetheless, you add Steve's case, and it's interesting that Buddhists aren't seeing Buddha, Hindus aren't seeing Krishna in the way that people, including non-Christians, are seeing Jesus. suggests something more about the truth of Christianity that challenges the universalist thesis. I think that's that that's really fair. Let me throw some other objections at you, Jerry. And we probably won't get through all these. You should cover these in your writings in other areas, but some have said like, "All right, if there really were valid near-death experiences, we should have like a precise sequence of events during a resuscitation rather than just I saw a shoe here or heard a comment there." Precise sequence of events. Are there those kind of cases? Yes. In both of those essays that I sent you, I give sequential cases. I think I have at least two where the person gave a series of events over 45 minutes. And one of these persons, the person, a a girl died in a swimming pool. She got her, if I remember correctly, got her hair caught in the drain and she drowned. But there was a medical doctor on the side of the pool and they called they called 911 immediately and the doctor starting to work. But she describes the experience from the time the ambulance pulled up till the time the guys got the gurnie and ran into the backyard until a time they picked the girl up and put her on, put her in the ambulance and took her away. She does a 45minute detailed where nobody had nobody found any mistakes in her conclusion and that's not rare. There's many of those that will go for a long time. So if if they want sequences, we've got sequences. Yes. Okay. What about the the challenge which I think it's a fair question that these reports don't take place when there's like brain death or the sessation of brain activity or heart stoppage. Do we really have data that lines up with the time when all the instruments we have indicate the brain is not functioning? Well, the I'm glad I be before I didn't know you were going to ask this question. I'm glad I already gave you the Ohio State University question. You did? Yeah. That guy that guy was clinically dead when they started. They stopped his heart. So, he was dead dead. He's got 30 seconds max. Max. People are going to say 14 to 23 before his brain dies. And this state went on for 90 minutes. So this guy is dead dead. His report is an after death. You know, a couple of the major researchers have said we should start stop calling these near-death. The best cases should be called postdeath visions or postdeath experiences, you know, because there's too many of them. Now, that's why I like the flat brain flat heart cases and the fact that you only have to wait 30 seconds for it for an evidence to come. And by the way, here's a little twist with skeptics. I told you I've been doing this since 72. Critics would say things like, "Well, you tell me when you get a flat brain, flat heart case, and I'll be there. But until then, when their nervous system is operating, this isn't evidential at all." And that's what I used to hear a long time ago. And I'd say, you know, and I'd say, well, I hope to get a flat EEG case and when I get one or two, because the the heart would already be stopped. I got the flat brain, but those are far far in between. You don't get somebody in the emergency room where they're dying and you hook up an EEG with all the electro with all the spots on the brain. Um, so they kept saying, "Yeah, that's what I thought. You didn't have the machines on your side." Okay, now it's reversed and we've got the machines on our side and it's post heart, post brain and for a long time and now you know what skeptics say to me when I'm in universities. How do you know those machines were measuring everything? Huh? Well, that's funny. 30 years ago, you wanted me to have the machines cuz you thought they were measuring everything. And now that we have the machines, you go, "Well, maybe they don't measure everything." So, I'll tell you, I think that's a just a reputation of how the critics have had to retreat. But I will tell you a a quick comment by a neurologist. I was doing this in a large church in um Alabama in Montgomery, Alabama. And they had a whole bunch of doctors in their church. It was kind of funny. One doctor came up to me after the service and I said, "What's your special?" He said, "I'm a neurologist." Well, and the pecking order, neurology is often kind of like put up at the top. Well, the guy behind him elbowed him and he said they were they were part partners. He elbowed him and he goes, "I'm a step above him. I'm a neurological surgeon." And that's what he he said, "I can operate on his brain." So, they were they were cutting up. But the guy who was a neurological surgeon, he said, "All you've got to do is this. When you say flatart, fla flat brain," and you notice in my essays I added this. He says, "When you say flat heart, flat brain, say as far as our instruments can measure." But see, you say, "Well, okay, but you're leaving a slight chance for some under activity that we don't know about." And then I come back with this. You know, that's a funny objection because if they have a real low eb experience, they're not reporting I was the prime of life. I was more alive than I ever was before. Golly, it was great up there. And reporting figures and reporting this, that's not the guy whose underlying brain waves are are down low. So, that defeats that one, too. Just this week, the the account I was telling you about my my friend who said he had an out-of- body experience. I asked him, I said, "Was it clear or was it like a dream?" He said it was very clear. It was qualitatively different than a dream. I said, "You're looking down at your body. your ribs are crushed and you're dead trying to survive in life. Were you calm?" And he kind of thought, he goes, "I was totally calm." And I observed the whole thing. So, even if they're right that you're not brain dead, this still doesn't explain shared near-death experiences. That's a great comeback, Sean. The evidential cases could even be used when you're only near dead. But if you're near dead, you shouldn't be explaining things that happen a mile away that can be verified because nothing in the human body allows you to do that. Well, you weren't dead yet. I'll tell you what, even if you're alive, you can't look a mile away and exper experience these these, you know, the car accident in front of your house. I'm just making things up, but so yeah, the fact that it's evidential puts all of this to rest. So that would be a third objection. uh even if they weren't totally dead, they weren't flat brain, flat heart, they shouldn't be reporting that evidential phenomena. You're totally right. Tell me more about the blind people being able to see. And these are cases of people that were blind from birth and then see in the near-death experience. And again, you lay this out in your chapter, but we're talking about precise details. Like, how do we know they just didn't hear something and then report somebody else's assessment? like why should we trust these accounts? I will be super honest with you and say you're probably thinking I hope you will for this whole interview. Um I will tell you the the the deaf the blind ones are the weakest category of all. Oh, okay. And they are well they are because there's only a few that I know of. Now maybe the guys that specialize there I'm sure there's guys that specialize in the blind cases. I I'm a reviewer for the for the um Journal of Near-Death Studies, which comes out of the University of Virginia, Brain Studies. They call me the Christian Reviewer, quote unquote. You know why they call me that? A number of the reviewers are quot Christians, but they're medical doctors. I'm the only guy in their staff who's like trained in theology or philosophy or whatever, so they call me the Christian reviewer. And it's kind of funny, but I've been doing this with for them for 15 years. I could check some of those people, and they probably have. I'll just flat out uh concede. They could have some blind cases that I don't know about because I don't really look for them. I think the the numbers cases I think if I I could tell you a few in the two twilight zone categories. I could tell you some other ones inside the room. I even when I give lectures I do near-death humor. I mean some of the cases are hilarious but they report the joke and people tell it later. I mean, some of them are like, "Whoa, you saw that?" Um, but the blind, they don't have a lot of really evidence ones. One was a guy saw a design on a person's tie. One was they had never seen snow before and they looked out and a street car had come by and they thought the they had heard street cars, but they the the contrast of the snow and the street car really just caught them by surprise. Um, another one, maybe the most evidential one is a one who a woman that I know of, a woman who had an NDE and when she was growing up, she had two other blind friends and the three of them were real close and the two of them had died and she was the only one who was alive. But when she had a near-death experience, her two friends were there. And for the first time in her life, she was shocked to see the faces of her two friends. You can put your fingers down someone's nose and forehead and chin, as blind people would probably do, and feel their face, but she saw their face. Now, I realize that a critic would say, "Ah, you can get a pretty good idea of a person's face from running your I understand, but it's going to be a shock when you see the person." and she accurately described her two friends because everybody has photographs. She couldn't see the photographs. So, she accurately def uh described her two friends faces. That's probably the best case I know. Of course, she came back, her two friends were dead, but there's not a lot of blind cases. And you go, "Well, see, that's that's the in your armor." I beg to differ with you. to me the the Ohio State case or the 12digit number case or some other ones I can tell you would would blow those away. I put them there because they're there and it's another category, not because I have a whole lot of cases. If you were going to sum up what you think is just the weakness of really all naturalistic attempts to explain away near-death experiences, what does it boil down to? Why they just can't explain the data? and why at the end of one of the chapters you said something to the effect of like the naturalistic explanations are so weak it's not even close that they point towards at least life after death. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. They do a really poor job of if they say later, well maybe there's underlying brain activity. So I'll go, yeah, well you guys weren't saying that 30 years ago when you said you got to give me some brain activity reports cuz I need them now. I got them. And you're telling me, but that guy, they shouldn't be rejoicing. They shouldn't be happy. They shouldn't be alive. They shouldn't be able, like you said, the third reason, they shouldn't be able to see the evidential cases. So, no matter what they say, they're they're in big trouble. And and when I'm debating the resurrection with people with skeptics, and they come back with this, this is the objection you might hear the most on ND, the same one you hear in resurrection. Yeah, but this is a naturalistic world and that kind of stuff that you're talking about doesn't occur in our world. These those are anomalies and I can't explain them, but the word's natural and I go time out. Have you ever heard of near-death experiences? And that's what I do in dialogue on the resurrection. Have you ever heard of near-death experiences? Cuz if and I'll then I'll say if there's an afterlife and and you can you know you can prod a little bit of debate and not be nasty. You can say and so far I don't hear you coming close to refuting any of these n these indes but if there's afterlife the resurrection is a species of afterlife and so now you've got to be a lot more open to resurrection. Sorry I'm sorry if that points to Christianity when you get to the resurrection but that's just the world you live in. So, and then the other one I do is another timeout. I'll go wait a minute. You said there's no things there's nothing like that in the world. No supernatural. That's right. You tell a scientist that there's no data in the world. Okay. Wonderful. Uh, so you're a naturalist. You're a materialist. Yep. Let me just stop for a second. Could you I've given you 10 evidences for the resurrection. Can you give me 10 evidence of naturalism or 10 evidence of a materialism? You can't prove it. Bertrand Russell said, "There's no way to prove naturalism." And he was one of their favorites, right? And he said, "You can't prove it. If you can't prove your view, don't sit there like a king and sit over my evidence and tell me I have nothing and the foundation you're using to refute my stuff has no evidence at all. You can't prove naturalism. You can't prove materialism." But I I mean, I come back and I want But I want them to talk about NDEs. I'll try to get him on indes. And I won't tell you the guy's name. I don't want to take anybody in vain, but one of the it wasn't it wasn't Bartman. I will tell you that just since that was what people are going to think, but I was dialoguing years ago with one of the best known skeptics um in the world. And he still is very well known. And this guy said, "Well, why should I believe in the resurrection?" And I did that long time ago. And I did, let's talk about near-death experiences. Time out. Let's do indes. And he specifically said, this is before there was start any evidence that Sean, there might have been 20 cases in those days. This guy goes, I don't want to discuss indes. I said, come on. If you want background evidence on why you should believe in the resurrection instead of spouting your naturalism, uh, what do you do about Indies? I'd said I don't want to discuss Indies. And I I was getting a little ticked at him because he was he was being really cocky. And I said, "Well, I guess you don't. You don't want to because it would get you too close to heaven and then you have some choices to make and you wouldn't know what to do with them." And I no sooner had said that. It went on for about another minute. And the moderator said, "All right, that's all the time we have." And I'm thinking to myself, "Yes, like that." I was I was doing that inside. I didn't show it on the outside, but I don't think they've got any good I can't think of a good comeback. And it surely is not I'm a naturalist and you don't have it because um right behind me here, you know the stuff Lee Stroel does, but look, here's this testing prayer book. I interviewed her. Yep. Well, now she's a Harvard PhD. The book is published by Harvard University Press. And the and the two endorsements in the back are president and former uh professor in Harvard Medical School. Don't tell me nobody in the world knows these cases. And she went to Africa and South America and duplicated these cases. How about the double blind prayer tests that have been in at least two medical peer-reviewed medical um they're double blind peer-reviewed and on prayer. One of the articles says this, the results of this uh experiment is shows evidence for the Judeo-Christian God. Boy, this is published in 88 or ' 89. You couldn't say that today in a medical, but it is in that article. And so, if you just look, the world is full of these cases. Don't say, "I don't ever hear these things. The world only knows natural things." Well, look at this book. Look at the two articles there. How about Craig Keenir? Craig's third book on miracles has more pre and post X-rays, MRIs, CAT scans, pre and post where the doctor said, "Your leg wasn't broken. There's no scar material, no halo around the break in the thing." So, they order the X-rays from the hospital and he sees the break in the guy's leg. There's an increasing There's hundreds of these things. So, if you say there's nothing like that in the world, your eyes aren't open. M so Gary you first published although you studied 1972 for about 20 years before you published 1992 beyond death and you said there were just a few cases then apologists were not studying this not as many academics a lot of doctors were driving this Jeffrey Long and Sabbomb and and a handful of others how was your case for near-death experiences received then and how differently is it received Now whether from skeptics or from believers okay I said 1972 10 years later this will interest you 10 years later I was invited to University of Connecticut campus where one of the best IDE experts Ken Ring if you do any work you'll see Ken Ring's name all over the place professor of psychology Connecticut we invited to his home and in that meeting were about 10 of the best known NDE guys in the world and I I mean, you're talking Carlos Osis, you're talking about Raymond Moody, you're talking about um the number uh one guy right now. I I mean, the top people and these we were all together in in Ken Ring's home and I got to sit with these guys for for a weekend and that was 10 years later. Then 10 years after that was was the book and I got to hear these things and what their cases were. And then it was like this. The Christians I would talk to would be like this. Oh, I never heard about this. That's really interesting. Yeah, I got a problem with them because they're not in the they're not biblical. I go, okay, okay, time out. There are at least three near-death experiences in the Bible. Really? And I tell them and they go, "Huh? Well, I guess I am open then." And that's kind of how it was. It was hit and miss. And as time goes on, Christians got a little more skeptical because of this universalism thing. Yep. And I just don't think it stands a chance because of things like Steve Miller's a little experiment and the thing that if you ask them, are there is there evidence that you saw Buddha? None. Well, I'm sorry, but I don't have to listen to that. Um, now we got the data. We've got the cases of people seeing Jesus, they say, who are not Christians. And you go, see there, you're using it. I don't use it. I say I'm interested in this, but I don't use it in my evidential case. is not evidential. So right now I think there's a great openness to NDEs. But you know there's a re-evaluation going on right now about what inherency is and what should we do with the Bible and things have changed a little bit. And I think with that little openness that little uh difference people are willing to take things like when people used to say here's an old objection. Hebrews says it's appointed unto men to and to die and after that the judgment. I go, "Is that your reputation?" Yeah. Well, let me ask you a question. Um, Peter died about 63 AD, was martyed. Um, how's that date sound? Is that pretty close to you? 63. I I go, "Has Peter been Has Peter been to the judgment yet? Oh, I hadn't thought about that. I guess he hasn't been to the judgment. Well, if Peter hasn't been to the judgment in all these years, what do you know what happened in the intervening years? I mean, you know, it that that verse in Hebrews doesn't go anywhere. And and if there are NDEs in the Bible, which I think there are, I think that shuts down that whole objection. So, anyway, I think Christians today, they they have me on talk shows, they ask me to speak in church. next to the resurrection. It's the topic most people want me to give in an apologetics association meeting. Very very interesting uh to hear that. I think you know Hebrews 9:27 you could also make a case that it's setting up a pattern of things that are normative. But of course God can override a general pattern. That's kind of what a miracle is. Sure. You could make that case. One last question for you on this. I believe I heard Craig Blowenberg suggest this as a possibility. We can't prove it but a possibility, right? You know, related to the question of those who've never heard. And he said, "We don't know, but it's possible that people have a kind of near-death experience before their final fate in which people have a chance to decide to follow Jesus or not. And if that's the case, that removes some of the sting of the injustice of people who never hear the name of Jesus. Now, to me, I can't prove that. I can't think of anything theologically impossible about that, but it's just a way of saying God can work in ways we don't know and we can't imagine. God is just. This could be one of them. I think that's a genuine possibility. Do you agree or would you take issue with that? I totally agree. I think we need to loosen up a little bit with our legalism is the way I would say it. I mean, I I'll give you more examples. What about I heard 15 years ago that a guy who tallies these things 15 years ago told me we are on our second 100,000 Muslim visions of Jesus. That was 15 years ago. What if that figure is in there? That's 100 that now it was it was going on 200,000. Okay. How about this one? in the missions book. Um when I came to Liberty, three different professors were using this. But um it's a story of uh uh a tribe in Ethiopia, as I remember correctly, and the witch doctor had a vision, a dream. And when he was done, he told everybody the next day and they said, "Two men are going to be coming to our our tribe. They're white men and they're going to have a little black book with them. And when they come, they're going to be set up over that tree over there." And he pointed to a tree and he said, "They're going to be set up under that tree. And when they come, the God who sent me this vision said, "You all believe cuz those are the words of truth." Okay? So he tells the whole tribe this. And they're prepared for these two men to come. And the men don't come for seven years. And it was a very large tribe, very large tribe. And two years later, the men came and the whole tribe converted. Now here's my question. that anybody who believed the witch doctor in the story but died in seven years in a big tribe before the white men came is that in this category too that they believed as much information as they had which is probably more than some of the Old Testament saints had and they would be in that category. So when God sends visions and dreams to any number of channels to the witch doctor, to the Muslims, NDE, yeah, I think we're selling God short. And well, first of all, I believe God can do whatever he wants to. It's not a contradiction, but but yeah, I'm totally totally open to this kind of stuff. And I think we have to quit being stupid and so stupid. What I mean by stupid is so legalistic that we prescribe to God what he can do and can't do. I think that's just a dumb excuse. Gary, I had no idea you started studying this in 1972. That's amazing. You really were one of the pioneer apologists pushing this, researching this, being willing to talk about it and defend it when I'm sure a lot of people, including Christians, thought you were crazy. I'm with you in terms of the data just being one of the strongest, if not the strongest piece of evidence pointing at least towards the afterlife and undermining naturalism and potentially towards Christianity. And so I'm going to keep advancing it on this channel. Two things for those of you watching. If you're like, I think Hobbermas is overstating his case. What do you think is the strongest naturalistic explanation that accounts for the range of uh kinds of near-death experiences that are so carefully chronicled listed here, and either I'll bring Gary back or I'll have Steve Miller back on. Gary, I'm assuming you'll join me and if we could come up with the top 10 naturalistic objections, uh we'll look at them and we'll respond. That'd be fun. So, please put it down there. And links to some of the best re rejoinders to this so we don't set up a straw man. We consider that. If some of you are watching and you have a near-death experience story, share it. I like to go through a lot of the videos on this and there's hundreds of them, Gary, in the videos I've done with Sabbomb and John Burke and with Jeffrey Long and uh probably six or eight with Steve Miller. There's hundreds of accounts of people that have just shared. So, if you have a story, share it and I'll take a look at it. Would love to assess it. Uh, and before we go, folks, you can also get a great chapter on this in On the Resurrection, uh, Gary Hobs's latest thousandpage book. I love that you included near-death experiences in the back. That's a great essay. When the Blackwell Companion chapter is out, we'll link it. We'll share it so people can see the latest case that's there. Thanks for giving us a glimpse of this. Those of you interested in studying apologetics, we just added an afterlife apologetics course we're going to be offering soon at uh Talbot at Bile University. So, think about joining us information below or check out Liberty. We just want you to get study in apologetics. We are in this together. So, go to one of the programs, get apologetics training. Go out there and make a difference. Uh make sure you hit subscribe. We've got some other programs coming up in Afterlife Apologetics and Beyond. even have actually Peter Singer coming on soon to have a conversation which should be fun and others. Gary always enjoy it. It's a lot of fun. Thanks for your work and just for coming back and talking with me. Thanks Sean. Enjoyed it very much. You're you're just a A1 in uh Inquisitor interviewer and I appreciate being on with you. It's always fun.