D'Souza argues for evidence of afterlife
We have been thinking of reading “Life After Death: The Evidence,” the new book by conservative pundit-turned-Christian apologist Dinesh D’Souza, which hit our desk last week. Now we come across Jerry Adler’s heartbreaking essay in the current issue of Newsweek, which may be summed up as: Don’t bother.
Adler opens with a scene from last spring, when he opened the front door of his Brooklyn home to find an Eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly on the steps. It was three months after the death of his son.
The butterfly, with its otherworldly beauty and silence, is, of course, a common metaphor for the soul. Its emergence from entombment as a chrysalis may have inspired ideas about human resurrection. In the newsletter of the Compassionate Friends, a support group for bereaved parents, the sudden appearance of butterflies (and birds, cloud formations, and particular songs on the radio) is sometimes cited as evidence of communication from beyond the grave. So let me be clear about where I stand: not only do I not believe it, but I can't understand why anyone would take comfort from it. I would hate to think of Max, with his fierce intelligence and tenacity, reduced to sending mute signals by way of insects.
Adler groups D’Souza’s book with mathematician David Berlinski's "The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions," physicist Frank J. Tripler's "The Physics of Christianity," and National Institutes of Health Director Francis S. Collins' "The Language of God" as constituting an attempt by believeers to confront the new atherism of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens et al "on its own intellectual turf, without benefit of scripture or revelation."
In the case of D'Souza, at least, Adler is skeptical of the result.
The "evidence," of necessity, is indirect: D'Souza doesn't claim to have communicated with anyone who has died, and he doesn't expect to. Instead, he looks to the human heart, and finds therein a universal moral code underlying acts of self-sacrifice and charity that appear to run counter to the Darwinian imperative to outcompete thy neighbor. This is a time-honored argument for the existence of a God who created human beings in his image and imbued them with a moral sense, as well as the free will to follow, or ignore, it. Berlinski uses the argument in his book, and Collins credits it with turning him from atheism to evangelical Christianity. (D'Souza acknowledges that the prominent atheist Richard Dawkins has offered an evolutionary explanation for human goodness, but he doesn't buy it.) In a Jesuitical display that does credit to his reputation as "an Indian William F. Buckley Jr.," D'Souza turns to his advantage one of the atheists' favorite arguments, God's apparent tolerance for human suffering. Precisely because evil so often goes unpunished in this world, he asserts, the moral code must reflect another reality, in which souls are judged, punished, or rewarded after death. "The postulate of an afterlife enables us to make sense of this life," he writes. It worked for Dante, didn't it?
And if that's not enough to convince you, D'Souza provides a checklist of benefits from believing in life after death: it keeps us honest, gives our lives "a sense of hope and purpose"—and "surveys show" that believers have better sex. It provides "a mechanism to teach our children right from wrong"—a mechanism that those who have been subjected to it tend to describe as a neurotic lifelong fear of going to Hell. And if your smart-alecky kid, full of all that Galileo stuff they get in school nowadays, should ask just where this Judgment business takes place, D'Souza provides you with a response. It happens in the multiverse, the infinitely multiplying complex of worlds predicted by some versions of quantum theory. In the multiverse, physical laws can take on different values, and matter itself may have a different form, so "there is nothing in physics to contradict the idea that we can live beyond death in other realms with bodies that are unlike the bodies we now possess."
The problem, Adler says, is that the multiverse “is supported by no more empirical evidence that the soul itself.” He is more interested in the Awareness During Resuscitation (AWARE) study of “near-death experiences,” which involves 600 subjects at 20 hospitals led by Dr. Sam Parnia of Weill Cornell Medical Center. Randomly generated images are to be projected in the hospital rooms of critically ill patients where they may be seen only from above, as by a patient having an out-of-body experience.
“If patients who survive NDEs can identify these images subsequently — well, not to overdramatize, but several centuries of materialism in the natural sciences will have to be rewritten,” Adler writes. He concludes:
I await Parnia's paper eagerly, although I can't imagine it will help fill the hole in my life left by the death of my son. Is there comfort in the idea that Max lives on as a disembodied consciousness in a parallel universe? I want him here with me now, and I would gladly trade my prospects for Eternity for the chance to hug him one more time. C. S. Lewis himself dismissed the capacity of faith to overcome bereavement. "Don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion," he wrote in A Grief Observed, "or I shall suspect that you don't understand."
Comments
There are recurring themes among attempts to raise religion above the level of faith, and into the realm of "observable proof".
One common pitfall is to create a premise for which there exists no contradictory evidence, and declare that as proof. But of course innumerable such premises could be created, and it should be generally understood that it is never possible to prove non-existence, so any idea we can think up would be equally eligible for this treatment.
Another pitfall is to lean on some subjective aesthetic view, sort of a "the world is this way because I can demonstrate that I like the idea of such a world a whole lot". Unfortunately, the universe has provided us no assurances that it meet our preferences.
Posted by: Harry | November 3, 2009 2:12 PM
This blog by Matthew Hay Brown may be summed up as follows: "I was thinking about reading the book entitled LIFE AFTER DEATH: THE EVIDENCE, but Jerry Adler read it for me, so now I'm an expert on the possibility of the afterlife. Jerry told me what to believe and not to believe. I always check with Jerry before I take a chance on reading a book."
Posted by: Anonymous | November 3, 2009 2:20 PM
Ok, if an afterlife exists then King Tut is in the midst of Ra, Isis and Osirus and Horus.
He doesn't believe this, he just likes the idea of his current super hero claim. I doubt it will survive forever anymore than the Egyptian afterlife will.
Posted by: Brianrrs37@atmc.net | November 3, 2009 3:10 PM
where is the link to order d'souza's book?
Posted by: Kenneth | November 3, 2009 4:35 PM
Ah D'Souza, ever the liar. He makes quite the living telling people lies they want to hear.
So all of this evidence, why isn't it believed by people who actually understand what scientific evidence actually means?
Posted by: Doug | November 4, 2009 1:52 PM
My only claim is to great human ignorance, however it never ceases to amaze me that we turn to laboratories and petri dishes & "generated images" to "scientifically" prove life after death. Has anyone ever been able to weigh or measure or enclose LOVE in a box? Grown any in a petri dish? Yet we see daily evidence of it all around us - we're all scientifically sure it exists. I hope those folks in the AWARE study don't take off upside down & mess up the scientific results.
Posted by: blueworld | November 4, 2009 2:11 PM
It is apparent that Jerry Adler is still in so much pain, grieving the death of his son.Only a parent who has lost a child can relate to what he is experiencing. I hope he continues contact with Compassionate Friends or other like minded groups and/or work a grief counselor...obviously, the religious contacts have not helped him, but he can get to the other side of his pain where it becomes tolerable, but it takes time, lots of crying and believe it or not, praying to "to whom it may concern."
Posted by: James Maury | November 4, 2009 2:39 PM
Despite so many years of searching for evidence of life in some shape or form after death, I have no idea of its reality but, to me, existing in this human body, in this time and place, is extraordinary - so to exist somehow in a parallel dimension seems no less strange. I look forward to the results of Sam Parnia's AWARE experiments.
Posted by: Elizabeth W | November 4, 2009 7:17 PM
That guy was on Greta and he had zero "proof" their is a God. He is saying that for book sales. He knows good and well he has no evidence of any kind.
Posted by: Torrie | November 6, 2009 1:30 AM
"D'Souza argues for evidence of afterlife" If D'Souza thinks there's evidence for the childish insane belief in heaven, then he is even more stupid than I thought he was. "D'Souza" is just another word for "full of crap".
Posted by: bobxxxx | November 8, 2009 9:05 AM
D' Souza's politics may not be appealing, but the "scientific" debunking of the near-death experience reveals a kind of fundamentalist materialism unsupported by quantum physics. D' Souza manages to critique these debunkings very logically. Better to read the book yourself, Mr. Brown.
Posted by: Richard | November 8, 2009 9:00 PM