Here is another scientific investigation related to whether or not the souls exists, and it involves studies of people who have had near death experiences. Oncologist Dr. Jeffrey Long has done just that, and has written a book entitled "Evidence of the Afterlife." For over a decade, Dr. Long cataloged stories from over 1,600 people who have had the near death experience, and concludes that an afterlife must be real. Patients whose heartbeat and breathing had stopped and their brain had ceased to function, tell remarkably consistent stories that are generally lucid and highly organized. Dr. Long states that, "if these people had no brain function, like you have in a cardiac arrest, I think that it is the best model we're going to have to study whether or not conscious experience can occur apart from the physical brain. The research shows that the overwhelming answer is yes."
I find Dr. Long's statement about the brain not functioning to be quite fascinating. I find it fascinating because the skeptics of life after death always attribute the dying conscious or subconscious thoughts to a residual functioning of the brain. But, if there is no brain function, how can this be? My problem with the "out of body experience" is not that the soul leaves the body at death, but it's the claim that the out of body entity is able to see and hear what is going on. Perhaps the soul has a form of sight and hearing that doesn't require eyes and ears as we know them. In any event, Dr. Long's study does support what I have been saying to this point, that the soul is a separate and distinct entity.
Although I am reluctant to include extra-sensory perception testing and evaluation in my discussion to help prove the soul's existence, I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention it. My reluctance comes from my own skepticism, since the physical means by which thoughts are transmitted is not measurable by any known scientific means. But, like trying to find the soul, just because it can't be measured, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. In fact, despite many shortcomings in scientific rigor related to currently available paranormal data, there remains an element of uncertainty that cannot be dismissed at this point in time. I find it interesting that even though the vast majority of scientists do not believe in the paranormal phenomena, because they believe that the data is biased toward the investigators premise, they themselves are guilty of the same bias when it comes to their own premises.
Generally speaking the categories of extra-sensory perception testing are:
1. Precognition - knowledge a person may have of another person's future thoughts or of future events.
2. Psychokinesis - a person's ability to influence a physical object or event, by merely thinking about it.
3. Telepathy - a person's awareness of another's thoughts, without any communication through normal sensory channels.
4. Clairvoyance - knowledge acquired of an object or an event without using the senses.
My opinion is that precognition is not possible because it assumes that future events have already occurred and that the free will of people living in current time cannot influence it. Well known psychic Edgar Cayce claimed that some of his predictions did not happen because people's free will prevented them from happening. I find it difficult to accept this argument since it assumes that all that will happen, has already happened. If this were so, then the our existence and the existence of the universe is like a game that has already been played, but the results keep changing based upon variations of the free wills of the players on the game board. Not only is this line of thinking confusing, it doesn't make sense when viewed from the perspective of purpose. I don't believe that God's purpose is to play a continual never ending game, and that the purpose of human free will is just a form of amusement.
I also don't believe in Psychokinesis, since measurable forces would be required to move objects. On the other hand if subatomic matter had intelligence that could be influenced by the use of access codes, we are into a whole new ballgame.
Telepathy and clairvoyance are not so difficult to dismiss. My own personal experience involved a magician who asked me to think of a playing card. When I thought of the five of diamonds, the magician picked that card out of the deck. I was astonished by this magic trick. How could the magician know what I was thinking? Perhaps there is a good explanation, if I knew how to do the trick, but it's not like picking a card from the deck and the magician guessing the card. This somehow involved my mind. Perhaps subliminal audio messaging or an imperceptive flashed hologram could have influenced my selection of the five of diamonds, but if so, it would be a great form of advertising or group brainwashing!
My thinking on the subject of telepathy and clairvoyance is that current researchers are probably "boxed in" by their effort to find a means of thought transmission. They assume that thought transmission is like radio waves that are transmitted by a sending and receiving source, but what if everything in the universe is somehow interconnected and thoughts are intertwined in a universal web of knowledge. Before you say that this is impossible, consider how radio waves and submicroscopic particles are currently being transmitted through the air and through your body. If this were not so then your radio, television, and cell phone would not work.
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