{"id":110837,"date":"2025-06-22T20:16:54","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T02:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=110837"},"modified":"2025-06-22T20:17:21","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T02:17:21","slug":"an-ongoing-challenge-to-a-materialistic-worldview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2025\/06\/an-ongoing-challenge-to-a-materialistic-worldview.html","title":{"rendered":"An ongoing challenge to a materialistic worldview"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"My<\/a>
On the campus of the University of California at Los Angeles, where Mayim Bialik earned her doctorate in neuroscience. \u00a0(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some of you, I think, will be interested in this ninety-minute interview:<\/p>\n

\u201cMayim Bialik Chats with Bruce Greyson on Remarkable \u2018Breakdown\u2019 Podcast: Check out the new episode of Mayim Bialik\u2019s Breakdown Podcast, where she sits for a chat about NDEs with IANDS founder Dr. Bruce Greyson.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cMayim Bialik Explores Near-Death Experiences With Bruce Greyson, MD,\u00a0 in Not-To-Be Missed \u2018Breakdown\u2019 Podcast.\u201d \u00a0Neuroscientist and actress Mayim Bialik, Ph.D., interviewed IANDS founder and University of Virginia Professor Emeritus Bruce Greyson, MD, in a compelling episode<\/a> of her \u2018Breakdown\u2019 podcast.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And here\u2019s a seventy-minute podcast conversation that Oprah Winfrey recently had with Dr. Greyson: \u00a0\u201cSee the Remarkable Oprah Interview with IANDS Co-Founder Bruce Greyson: IANDS co-founder Bruce Greyson recently sat down for an interview with the legendary Oprah Winfrey. See the full Oprah Interview here!\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Too<\/a>
A depiction of a soul being conveyed to heaven by two angels, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825\u20131905). Wikimedia Commons public domain image.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I want to share a couple of passages here from Sebastian Junger\u2019s 2024 autobiographical book In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife.<\/i>\u00a0 Junger, the bestselling author of such books as The Perfect Storm<\/em>, was raised as a religious skeptic and, although he now seems to be wavering just a bit because of his own close encounter with dying, he seems pretty clearly to be still committed to religious skepticism. \u00a0But he recognizes serious challenges to the worldview that he inherited.<\/p>\n

\n
In 1998, Dr. Greyson and two colleagues, Emily Cooke and Ian Stevenson, published a series of extraordinary accounts of near-death experiences in the Journal of Scientific Exploration<\/em>. As explained in the abstract, they wanted to examine fourteen cases that, in their opinion, gave credence to the idea that individual consciousness survives death. Some cases were drawn from popular accounts published in newspapers, and some were from their own files. The researchers attempted to track down people from the accounts\u2014sometimes decades later\u2014and were able to confirm the stories in only the most general sense. It goes without saying that these are self-reported stories that, by definition, are impossible to confirm. The core experiences in the stories are remarkably consistent, though, and as I read them, I found it hard to imagine that deliberate falsifications would converge in such dramatic ways. In every case cited by Greyson and his colleagues, the dying person found themselves outside their body and often looking down from above as doctors or bystanders tried to save them. Many also claimed to have perceptions that were not constrained by ordinary human perspectives. \u201cIn my wanderings there was a strange consciousness that I could see through the walls of the building,\u201d recorded a British army officer named Alexander Ogston, who almost died of typhoid fever at a military hospital around 1900. \u201cI saw plainly, for instance, a poor Royal Army Medical surgeon, of whose existence I had not known, and who was in quite another part of the hospital, grow very ill and scream and die; I saw them cover his corpse and carry him softly out on shoeless feet, quietly and surreptitiously, lest we should know that he had died. . . . \u00a0Afterwards, when I told these happenings to the sisters [nurses], they informed me that all of this had happened.\u201d According to Greyson and his colleagues, a nurse named Jean Morrow contacted them in 1991 to give her experience of almost dying in childbirth decades earlier: \u201cDue to blood loss, my blood pressure dropped. When I heard, \u2018Oh my god, we\u2019re losing her,\u2019 I was out of body at once and on the ceiling of the operating room looking down\u2014watching them work on a body.\u201d Her account is similar to one given to Greyson by Peggy Raso, who barely survived a pulmonary embolism after giving birth to a healthy baby: \u201cI, the real me, was not on the bed, and I began to think about this. . . . \u00a0I looked down at the bed from my vantage point near the ceiling. I saw a girl there who looked to be in a great deal of pain. . . . \u00a0I felt sorry for her. Doctors and nurses were coming and going from the room. I saw one doctor hit her hard on the chest. I tried to tell them I was not there. I saw a doctor come to the station that I recognized. He was a family friend and I had been raised next door to him. The nurse told him [Peggy Raso] had just died. He replied he would call Margaret (my mother). My hearing was extremely acute. I heard and saw another patient on the floor complaining about the activity and noise coming from my room. It dawned on me they were talking about me. I tried to tell them I was not down there. It became obvious they were not hearing me.\u201d Another recurring theme in many near-death experiences is encountering dead loved ones and other spirits. Not only have researchers documented this from around the world, but virtually every society believes that when you die, you will be reunited with loved ones who have already passed. This belief exists in the entire spectrum of human society, from small-band hunter-gatherers to mass industrialists, and forms a core part of almost all religions, including Christianity.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/div>\n
\n
\"the<\/a>
A map of New Zealand. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image). Muriwhenua, the tail of M\u0101ui\u2019s legendary fish, is the northernmost tip of the country. The M\u0101ori name for this part of New Zealand literally means \u2018the end of the land\u2019.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

This passage from In My Time of Dying<\/i> may perhaps make more sense to you if you have first read my brief 2014 Deseret News<\/em> article \u201cDiving into the afterlife in Hawaii.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 Te Rerenga Wairua<\/em>, the place to which Nga refers in the passage below, is also known as Cape Reinga<\/a> and is located in the extreme north northwest of the North Island of New Zealand:<\/p>\n

\n
Not only does the brain seem to continue functioning, it has experiences that are consistent across many, many cases. A study of near-death experiences around the world found some cultural variations\u2014people from Anglo-European society were more likely to describe a journey through darkness as a \u201ctunnel\u201d rather than a \u201cvoid\u201d\u2014but the basic contours of the experience were remarkably similar. The dying generally recall rising over their bodies, journeying to another realm, encountering dead relatives, and returning. A M\u0101ori woman named Nga, for example, recounted her brush with death to New Zealand author Michael King: \u201cI became seriously ill for the first time in my life,\u201d Nga said. \u201cI became so ill that my spirit actually passed out of my body. My family believed I was dead because my breathing stopped. . . . \u00a0I had hovered over my head and then left the room and traveled northwards, towards the Tail of the Fish. I passed over the Waikato River, across the Manukau, over Ng\u0101ti Wh\u0101tua, Ng\u0101puhi, Te Rarawa, and Te Aup\u014duri until I came to Te Rerenga Wairua, the leaping-off place of souls.\u201d At that point, a voice told Nga to go back because it was not her time. She regained consciousness in her body, surrounded by family members.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\"Rising<\/a>
\u201cL\u2019\u00e2me de saint Bertin \u00e9lev\u00e9e vers Dieu\u201d [\u201cThe Soul of St. Bertin Ascends Toward God\u201d], by Simon Marmion (circa 1425\u20131489). Wikimedia Commons public domain image<\/figcaption><\/figure>From the Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>\u2122, I offer yet more evidence to show that theists persist in shamelessly jabbing their thumbs in the eyes of everybody else on the planet, even imposing their meddlesome worldview on innocent and defenseless children:<\/p>\n