The End Of The
Tunnel Of Light
Ned
From: "Ned"
To: "Positive Atheism"
Sent: October 16, 2001
Subject: Positive Atheism Letters Section
I don't suppose that this is the posting sort of letter. I have little to add to your marvelous site and wish only to pat you enthusiastically about the back and thank you for making such a reasonable argument for rational thought available to us casual searchers. I dropped in to your site and have spent literally dozens of fruitful hours browsing. You manage to cast a skeptical light across the intolerant revealed faiths without stooping to their level of blandishments. Quite a feat, from my experience. Please keep up the good work. Your mission is truly an honorable one.
From: "Positive Atheism"
To: "Ned"
Subject: Positive Atheism Letters Section
Date: October 16, 2001
Ay! We thank you for your kind words! Even some who you'd think would appreciate what we do still can't handle this or that quirk. Never mind, because this is art -- self-expression -- and, speaking only for myself, I do this for me and for me alone. Anybody who wishes to look on or even to join in is welcome as long as they behave themselves (at least try to be polite, try to maintain some semblance of quietness, etc). And if they don't like it, there's always the animated rubber ducky that used to live on the front page. [The link would take the reader variously to Teletubbys, Tickle Me Elmo, That disgusting Purple Dinosaur whose name (mercifully) escapes me, Romper Room, Hump the Wonder Panda, Davey and Goliath, Heckle and Jeckyll the Talking Magpies, and so fourth.]
Cliff Walker
Positive Atheism Magazine
Six years of service to
people with no reason to believe
From: "Ned"
To: "Positive Atheism"
Subject: Positive Atheism Letters Section
Date: October 16, 2001
Don't you ever sleep? A well-considered reply within hours is a level of Consumer Service I wish I could get from my Insurance Company.
I largely deconverted in 1978 when my father passed away. I was 18. The Church reps said something to the effect that "God must have wanted him to come home" which left me unsoothed. Home was the little white house where I lived, as far as I was concerned. I delved into the Tibetan Book of the Dead and read some Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and felt a little better, but not much.
So much for background. A chink in your reasoning for your views, or at least a sub-topic that I can respectfully disagree with you on, is your conclusion that life blinks out at the time of death. I agree that there is no benevolent creator waiting on the other side to reward us for our faith.
However, the preponderance of evidence gathered from folks who have gone temporarily brain dead and then slipped back into life indicates (not proves, this is a process that honors the scientific method) that there's this tunnel of light accompanied by a feeling of profound well-being. As I recall, interviewees were of many faiths and none at all, and each used the idioms that reflected their beliefs. "I was near Jesus." "I touched God." "I was as one with the Cosmos." "Gathering about me were my Ancestors." I paraphrase but you get the point. The evidence is that we all go somewhere, at least those who come back did, and that that somewhere is the same regardless of your belief or lack thereof. Pascal is cut off at the knees, don't you think?
I've got to run. Sorry for such a quick note.
From: "Positive Atheism"
To: "Ned"
Subject: Positive Atheism Letters Section
Date: October 16, 2001
Well, it would be nice to have something more substantial to go on than the anecdotal account of somebody whose health has gone so far south that a team of seasoned ER physicians has pronounced him "dead."
Unfortunately, we have little to go on besides these dubious anecdotes showcased in National Enquirer plus the claims of a relatively small number of nineteenth century-style "mediums" ("media"?) cracking the knuckle of the big toe under a table in a dark room. I really don't have any reason to believe that life goes on -- except that I'd really like for it to go on! I really wish I could see my grandma again. I wish that those few brief and very sickly years weren't all my little brother got for his only-ever turn at Life's bat.
I used to think that if DNA could make "Me" once, it can make "Me" again. Then I realized that if DNA could make two copies of "Me" in succession, then there's nothing stopping her from making two copies of "Me" simultaneously. Think about it!
I mean -- uhhh -- can you picture that? having two consciousnesses going on at the same time? What would it be like to shake "your own" hand with "yourself" -- at the same time?
Sometimes it really kills me to think about this kind of stuff, but there's no sense in worrying about it because there's nothing I can do to change the situation. There is nothing I can do to keep my life (unless I happen to have missed something in my search for evidence of life after physical death). If there were even a hint of a possibility that we get to live again or that death is not final, I'd be one of those who would latch on to that possibility and not let go. I just don't see any such thing on the horizon.
Then again, even when I did believe in the afterlife, I didn't feel any better about death than I do today. Even that one time when it looked like I was on my way out I didn't want to go. And as much as I don't like the prospect of annihilation, I don't feel nearly as weird about dying as I did back then, when I thought there was an afterlife in store for me.
Most importantly, I don't see any evidence that the brain or nervous system interacts with something that we simply have yet to detect. To even keep looking for it any more is almost cliché , almost like we're trying to find the object of wishful thinking the Fountain of Youth or the Old Man in the Mountain or whatever. Meanwhile, every time we turn around, the human nervous system is shown to have this or that previously unknown but marvelously intricate function -- always, of course, explained in terms of the physical and never even a hint that there might be something not physical going on.
I am not saying that there is no afterlife. All I'm saying is that I have spent most of my life looking for reasons to believe that there is an afterlife and have not found any reasons to justify my believing that way.
Cliff Walker
Positive Atheism Magazine
Six years of service to
people with no reason to believe
From: "Ned"
To: "Positive Atheism"
Subject: Positive Atheism Letters Section
Date: October 16, 2001
Well, Cliff, I haven't spent a lot of time obsessing about the afterlife. Thus my blatant naïveté. I read your writing and your posted stuff and cannot help but agree wholeheartedly and feel light spreading within my dark pocket of discredited and suppressed superstitions, but there are some questions you haven't had the time or opportunity to address. Therefore, my inquiries about scientific inquiry into the cusp of after life.
You apparently give little credence to this pursuit and I can't differ with you on the facts as they appear. I'll take some time and try to find something to share with you that will pass your smell test. Something passed mine 20 years ago, so perhaps I can contribute to the scholarship so evident in your presentations.
Again, I want to thank you for the honor of exchanging thoughts with you.
I'm tickled pink!
Ned
From: "Positive Atheism"
To: "Ned"
Subject: Positive Atheism Letters Section
Date: October 16, 2001
I'm not sure I follow, but I am willing to discuss just about anything that's even remotely related to our editorial position.
However, some of these topics are more along the lines of, "I'll tell you where thirty years of pondering on that subject have taken me at this point in time and what steps I took to come to my current viewpoint on the matter."
Other matters will reveal that I'm clueless and have spent zero time and energy studying those topics (American football, for one).
My favorites, though, are those where we're both jumping in and stretching concepts and learning something. Even what I said about the afterlife is the result of having worked out a few new quesitons and learned a few new things about that subject.
Cliff Walker
Positive Atheism Magazine
Six years of service to
people with no reason to believe
From: "Ned"
To: "Positive Atheism"
Subject: Positive Atheism Letters Section
Date: October 17, 2001
The reason that you're not sure that you follow is that I am unsure of my lead. OK. Let me take a more in-your-face approach so you can sink your intellectual teeth in a little bit.
Hundreds of people who have been flatlined for a few minutes get revived and then get interviewed by psychologists who want to know what it was like. The answer we'd expect is "I dunno. I was dead. I had encountered nothingness."
But these folks sit up and say, " I was floating up this tunnel of light. I felt a peace and relaxation that released me from the pain. I approached a beautiful place that promised, you know, answers and a oneness with my fundamentals. Then I got sucked back and here I am."
Hundreds of them, Cliff. Different words and allegories, but I'll git right up in your face and proclaim that we've gotten a good look at some sort of tube to some sort of afterlife.
Of course, our witnesses get sucked back to life before the plunge off the edge to oblivion occurs. But punch near death experience into Google and you might find some sites that raise an eyebrow or two.
Again, if you recognize that everyone, regardless of faith, gets the same afterlife experience to the best of our ability to research, isn't that a compelling argument against this salvation through faith bullshit that our revealed neighbors pronounce? If everyone gets the same E-ticket ride at the end, why tolerate clerics offering a better E-ticket than the next guy? That's impossible. That's fraud.
I haven't had so much fun in days. Keep up with me here, old boy!
Ned
From: "Positive Atheism"
To: "Ned"
Subject: Positive Atheism Letters Section
Date: October 17, 2001
So, then, what is it that you want from me?
Cliff Walker
Positive Atheism Magazine
Six years of service to
people with no reason to believe
From: "Ned"
To: "Positive Atheism"
Subject: Positive Atheism Letters Section
Date: October 18, 2001
Dunno. I thought that I might contribute something. A new twist. Some topic that might have been overlooked. I've only corresponded with business contacts and friends before, so this shooting off an e-mail to someone whose scholarship has impressed me is new to me. Consider me one of those lurking autograph seekers you'd have encountered had your genius been swinging a baseball bat.
Thanks for your time. Now get back to work. I'll be back around soon enough!
From: "Positive Atheism"
To: "Ned"
Subject: Positive Atheism Letters Section
Date: October 18, 2001
No, I'm serious:
Why is it that you want me to believe in so-called dear-death experiences?
-- or --
Why is it that you want me to devote space and time to delving into the arguments and counter-arguments that are more than adequately covered elsewhere?
Since my medical conditions render me about one-third as productive as an able-bodied individual, and since I field over 250 e-mails per day, and since I do this alone, without any help plus publish a monthly print-edition magazine, I'll need to justify going off into a topic that I have not even wanted to pick up because, on the very surface, it's clear to me that we're dealing with very subjective and very ambiguous anecdotal evidence.
Having hallucinated profusely both after taking drugs and following an injury, and having come very close to death in a seizure where I spent at least a few minutes not breathing, I am not ready to take the testimony of a handful of people, all of whom were in such a state of unhealthiness that medical professionals pronounced the "dead," and call the conclusions behind all this "truth." I'll need more.
If you can talk me into it, I'll set aside some time and look into the situation and try to come up with the simplest explanation. I will try to avoid (or find alternatives to) explanations that would topple or overthrow current schools of science -- unless the evidence is strong enough to overwhelmingly show that that branch of science is, indeed, outdated.
Cliff Walker
Positive Atheism Magazine
Six years of service to
people with no reason to believe
From: "Ned" ;
To: "Positive Atheism"
Subject: Positive Atheism Letters Section
Date: October 18, 2001 9:55 PM
Thanks for the considered reply. I'll try to do your counter-query justice.
Both you and I consider Belief to be a strong word and we therefore use it sparingly. I am not trying to augment or amend your belief system. I am merely suggesting another argument that you might incorporate into your quiver.
I recall a long (16 exchanges or so) e-mail discourse that you had posted involving yourself and a pastor. He tried to presuppose you to death and I applauded your surgical and rational counterstrokes. The one issue where your argument was less than compelling was your counter to his presupposition that there was an afterlife, and that his God ruled that realm. You chose the belief-to-belief approach ("You believe, I believe not. There's no evidence") which was pretty tepid for you. Further, I've found in my parrying of theist evangelism that meeting belief with belief only encourages them.
Theists have staked out the afterlife as their turf, comfortable that science cannot reach up there. Control of that turf allows them to make absurd promises and subvert believer's rational existence here and now. Everyone, even you, wants to believe. If one wants to believe it is easy to up and believe. Now they've gotcha, right by the balls, and the heart and mind come trundling on apace.
Ergo, any argument that weighs in against a selective deity shunting your soul off the moment the ticker cuts out smudges the fundamental appeal of revealed religion. I suspect that most believers only put up with the nonsense because they like the preferred sojourner package in the end.
Here is evidence, not conclusive but provoking, that everyone flies coach. Science has found a way to study the turf most sacred and proprietary to the theists, and the theological conclusions to draw are that the brand and degree of your faith matters not a whit. That's bad news of epic proportions. Stewardship will plummet. Folks will start to question.
Do I want you to believe in the accuracy of NDE accounts and the validity of the studies? Of course not. You seem pretty capable of drawing your own conclusions. However, if someone of your eloquence and forensic marksmanship, with your pulpit and your connectivity to the non-theist community were to draw the same counter theistic conclusions that I have, it would contribute to general enlightenment.
Keep up the good work.
Regards,
Ned
From: "Positive Atheism"
To: "Ned"
Subject: Positive Atheism Letters Section
Date: October 18, 2001
As much as I want to live again, I certainly wouldn't want it to be like the Christian Heaven. Read Twain's "Letters From The Earth" for an approximation of my views in that regard.
Perhaps within a year I will be competent enough to make worthy pronouncements and speculations on this matter, but I am not that competent today.
You chose the belief-to-belief approach ("You believe, I believe not. There's no evidence) which was pretty tepid for you.
I'm sorry you consider the Burden of Proof to be "tepid" since I consider it to be the cornerstone of dealing with existential claims.
As particle physicist and [soon-to-be] philosopher of science Victor Stenger said yesterday, "I do not accept the burden of explaining all phenomena, real or imagined." (From his list, avoid-L, now posted in our quotes section.)
Theists have staked out the afterlife as their turf, comfortable that science cannot reach up there.
And science cannot reach "up there" any more than science can reach Santa's Workshop.
If they want us to take them seriously, they'll have to do better than Pascal's Wager or the Lazarus parable in Luke 16:20ff. If they can't do better, then we are not obligated to believe what they're telling us.
Control of that turf allows them to make absurd promises and subvert believer's rational existence here and now. Everyone, even you, wants to believe. If one wants to believe it is easy to up and believe. Now they've gotcha, right by the balls, and the heart and mind come trundling on apace.
And people can believe if they want. I may want to believe, but I don't have to follow through with that desire any more than I am compelled to follow through with a desire to get toasted or to debauch a moist one.
Ergo, any argument that weighs in against a selective deity shunting your soul off the moment the ticker cuts out smudges the fundamental appeal of revealed religion. I suspect that most believers only put up with the nonsense because they like the preferred sojourner package in the end.
They've allowed themselves to get taken in on the remote possibilities suggested by some variant of Pascal's Wager.
Cliff Walker
Positive Atheism Magazine
Six years of service to
people with no reason to believe
From: "Ned"
To: "Positive Atheism"
Sent: October 19, 2001 5:34 AM
Subject: Positive Atheism Letters Section
So you're reading Stenger at the same time you're considering my speculations. I feel like the guy hitting on a girl at the bar only to find out she's waiting on Brad Pitt.
Christian Heaven would not amuse me. Imagine sitting around learning harp with Pope Innocent, Cardinal Torquemada, Adolf Hitler, and Idi Amin as tutors. All overseen by an invisible despot with a temperament like my ex-girlfriend's after her 4th glass of Merlot during PMS. Send me wheresoever the chaps in your quote list went.
"Tepid for you" and "tepid" are not to be confused. I expect nukes in every barrel when reading Cliff Walker. This is fan mail, dude!
Here's what I'm going to do. I've been scanning the web for some site that addresses NDE without an offensive dollop of spirituality encasing the facts. When I strike paydirt, I'll forward the page or site to you with necessary and appropriate commentary. You figure out HTTP, answer twelve score daily e-mails, edit your issue, massage your site, monitor your cat, tidy your office, and remember to laugh at least once an hour. When I pop back up on your screen, please remember that I'm a self-appointed freelance researcher. Not a screwball.
Oh. Oh. OH! I'm also going to forward you an E-mail I got from my wife's sister about how great it is that Dubya is a practicing Christian. Just to piss you off.
Stay well
Ned
From: "Positive Atheism Magazine"
To: "Ned"
Subject: Positive Atheism Letters Section
Date: October 19, 2001 8:05 AM
So you're reading Stenger at the same time you're considering my speculations. I feel like the guy hitting on a girl at the bar only to find out she's waiting on Brad Pitt.
Just reading Stenger? We were the first to publish a comprehensive skeptical reply to Dr. Newberg's claim that he had discovered how the brain "detects" the presence of "God" or the existence of "Ultimate Reality." Since then, a few have asked us for our opinion on their treatment of the subject, including Vic, whom I've known for two years, now. He was able to come up with some original objections to Newberg's claims that neither we nor Shermer's Skeptic piece had brought up. Between the three, I think we've pretty much covered all of the important bases.
Check this Interview which he linked from his page.
Stenger said he'd advise me in PAM's upcoming FAQ project on the Big Bang. Another real coup would have been if he or I could have talked professor Dawkins into proofing the Evolution part. I only wish I wasn't so ill and had the resources to pull off what I want to do here. Now it's all just a drea--
... at which point Brad Pitt, whoever he is, enters the bar ... |
Cliff Walker
Positive Atheism Magazine
Six years of service to
people with no reason to believe
Material by Cliff Walker (including unsigned editorial commentary) is copyright ©1995-2009 by Cliff Walker. Each submission is copyrighted by its writer, who retains control of the work except that by submitting it to Positive Atheism, permission has been granted to Positive Atheism to use the material or an edited version: (1) on the Positive Atheism web site; (2) in Positive Atheism Magazine; (3) in subsequent works controlled by Cliff Walker or Positive Atheism Magazine (including published or posted compilations). Excerpts not exceeding 500 words are allowed provided the proper copyright notice is affixed. Other use requires permission; Positive Atheism will work to protect the rights of all who submit their writings to us.