I was recently recommended a book called Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife by someone who was raised Catholic. Knowing that I was an atheist with more of an analytical mind, they believed that perhaps reading about heaven from a physician may help make me more open to believing that something did indeed exist after death—some sort of afterlife. A bit curious, I told them I would read it.

Before this book, I had only recently come across the term: “near-death experience.” I never really paid attention to the term, but this book showed me just how many religious people today are using these subjective accounts from others to act as their “proof” that there is a heaven and a hell after death.

Allow me to briefly describe what a “near-death experience” often entails. A person gets severely injured in some way through illness or injury enough to bring them to the brink of death. In what the person describes as an “out-of-body experience,” they typically look down on their own bodies and then potentially float up to see a white light or feel like they are on fire or see deceased people they knew or hear angels singing before being brought back to their bodies.

The neurosurgeon, Eben Alexander, writes in Proof of Heaven of catching a rare form of bacterial meningitis, which forced him into a coma where he saw heaven. Of course, for many of us, we will never have this type of experience and must rely solely on his story and his faith that it happened…sounds a lot like more religious thinking to me. He also grew up in religion and describes using skydiving as a way of feeling something more than just what was around him. Therefore, he did not start out as some kind of staunch atheist. Dr. Alexander was already primed to look for spiritual explanations for his questions about the world.

After the doctors saved his life and he came back into his body, he told the world about his travels to heaven, along with his deceased sister, clouds that held beautiful butterflies, and lovely girls. There was peace and joy to be found in this unknown place, and he was sad to leave it.

I closed the book feeling frustrated, scammed, and lied to all at once. Here was a neurosurgeon who was giving us nothing more than more of the exact same language that all the other religious leaders of the world were giving. Dr. Alexander skimmed through some of the very valid scientific explanations of his experience because, to him, science could not stomp out his faith that this experience meant something deeper than it did.

Having grown up with the internet, I immediately jumped to the search engine to look at what other people felt. Did atheists come away as frustrated with this book as I did? Did the “proof” aspect of the title feel like clickbait to anyone else? Yes. Yes, it did. The best articles I read were from Sam Harris, which I will link below.

The neuroscientist and philosopher, Sam Harris, discussed Proof of Heaven and I actually agreed with his main premise. (However, please be aware that I completely disagree with his philosophical premises that we don’t truly have free will). As I also thought, one of the theories that Eben Alexander himself threw out without truly considering it was the idea that the most frightening…and wonderous thing in this world is the human mind, which we still do not know a lot about. And while Dr. Alexander seemed to suggest that he was brain-dead, he was not. So an oxygen-deprived brain or a dying brain could probably give out lots of, perhaps, new sensory experiences that make us believe they are real. Sam Harris talks of psychedelics that can trigger many of the same responses, like a DMT trip. DMT stands for dimethyltryptamine, which is found naturally in animals and plants and can distort the senses. Dr. Harris points out that DMT is actually a neurotransmitter in our brain, which could have been released by the brain for only a few minutes during his coma when he went on what just felt like a long trip. There is also the idea that with a dip in oxygen to the brain, then hallucinations can begin. Apparently, scientists do not know exactly which part of the brain could release a surge of DMT like the one Dr. Harris describes, thereby bolstering the notion that there is still so much we do not know about the brain and even less so about the dying brain. The dying brain has shown up on MRI scans as producing immense activity before death, but what it all means or how a person experiences it is not completely known and understood yet.

In other words, this “scientist” is going about the science part all wrong, as if he were a minister of the sciences and not its master. Dr. Eben Alexander is allowing this near-death experience to cloud his judgment and, unfortunately, making the others who sit on the edge of the fence in their faith jump off to his side without another thought. Hence, this book’s immense popularity, which I find unfathomable. For those of us who need more convincing that there is any such thing as an afterlife, this book was not it. There was no “proof of heaven” given in this book whatsoever, so reader beware.

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Links: https://www.amazon.com/Proof-Heaven-Neurosurgeons-Journey-Afterlife/dp/1451695195; https://www.samharris.org/blog/this-must-be-heaven; https://www.samharris.org/blog/science-on-the-brink-of-death; https://www.samharris.org/about; https://psychedelics.berkeley.edu/substance/dmt/; http://ebenalexander.com/about/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_experience#/media/File:Anna_Sahlst%C3%A9n_-_Passage.jpg

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Views Expressed Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the postings, strategies, or opinions of American Wordsmith, LLC. Please also know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand’s philosophy visit: aynrand.org.