You knew I was going to enjoy reading this book. In Evidence of the Afterlife Jeffrey Long, M.D., looks at “The Science of Near-Death Experiences.” The book really just contains the results and analysis of the largest-ever scientific study of near-death experiences (NDE). The study researched over 1300 NDErs (near death experiencers) from around the world, seeking to understand what causes such experiences and what greater realities they may point to. Ultimately, says Long, they point us to the stark reality that there is life after death and that those who experience NDE are bringing back just a little bit of that afterlife with them.

Let me cover a couple of complaints right off the top. Though Long claims that this is a scientific study, I doubt many scientists would be thrilled with his use of the term. The study involves analysis of tales of NDEs submitted via his web site. Though he offers some anecdotal evidence and occasional source evidence, all of his statistical analysis comes from anonymous submissions to a form on his web site. Needless to say, this hardly constitutes scientific rigor. Further, the book is quite poorly-written. For a title published by a major publisher (HarperOne in this case) Evidence of the Afterlife has a childish quality to it, like it is a high school essay rather than a serious book.

The book is structured around nine separate lines of evidence that, when taken together, point to the existence of an afterlife. Some are meant to stand on their own while others are meant to show the consistency in NDEs, thus providing proof of their validity. In brief, here are those evidences: 1) The level of consciousness and alertness during NDEs is greater than it is in the rest of life, even though the NDErs are unconscious or clinically dead; 2) What NDErs see and hear in an out-of-body state is generally realistic and verifiable; 3) Normal or supernormal vision occurs in NDEs among those who are legally blind. In other words, during an NDE the blind experience vision; 4) Many NDEs occur under anesthesia when conscious experience should be impossible; 5) Life reviews during NDEs include real events, including events that have otherwise been forgotten; 6) When NDErs encounter others during their experiences, those other people are almost always already deceased; 7) The NDEs of children are essentially identical to those of adults who may be accused of having their experiences influenced by what they have heard of other NDErs; 8 ) NDEs are consistent around the world; 9) Most NDErs experience profound changes in their lives following an NDE. These after-effects are powerful and long-lasting, leading the NDErs to become better people.

Through his studies, Long has become a believer in NDEs, saying rightly, it seems, that they are spiritual experiences more than medical experiences. Though doctors are not able to explain NDEs through medical science, those who admit the existence of a Higher Power most certainly can. This is an important thread to follow. Almost all NDE survivors claim that they are now more spiritual than before their near-death experience. Isn’t it interesting that such experiences drive people toward spirituality rather than away from it? As a Christian, this ought to make me glad, right? Yet all is not well, for rarely does that new-found spirituality look anything like a biblical spirituality. “Although they don’t necessarily become more religious, NDErs often state that they become more spiritual, and with that change comes a belief in the sacredness of life and a special knowledge that serves to guide them the rest of their lives. … Near-death experiencers are virtually unanimous that the afterlife is for all of us, not just for those who have had NDEs. This is certainly consistent with their uniform description of the afterlife as a loving and inclusive realm, a realm for us all. For decades NDEs have been a message of hope to millions of people that there is an afterlife for both themselves and their loved ones.”

Uh oh. Very quickly we see that a New Age kind of spirituality is what NDErs return with. Though they claim to now know that God exists, many of them also come to see that we are all god. In the words of a typical survivor, “We live in a ‘plural unity’ or ‘oneness.’ In other words, our reality is ‘unity in plurality and plurality in unity.’ That I was everything and everything was me, without essential differences other than in earthly appearances. That there is no God outside ourselves, but rather, God is in everything and everything is a part of God, as is life itself.” Did you get that?

Many NDErs go further still, returning from their experiences to claim supernatural abilities, either during that experience or continuing after. Many claim that they were omniscient while they were near-dead, knowing all there is to know. Many claim to have brought back knowledge that they are now tasked with imparting to the rest of humanity . Others claim to have gained psychic abilities, especially in regard to empathizing with people’s moods and troubles. Most claimed that the NDE has left them with little or no fear of death. Having experienced death once, they feel prepared to face it again, knowing in their hearts that they will go to a better place for a better existence. Time would fail me to offer a point-by-point look at what the Bible teaches in contrast to the spirituality of these NDErs. Suffice it to say that on almost every point, NDEr spirituality is directly opposite to what the Bible teaches.

Looking at all of this evidence, and having determined that there is, indeed, an afterlife, Long says “Because NDEs happen to people all over the world, they are a spiritual thread that binds us together, a common experience that reminds us of our mutual spiritual nature.” Later he writes, “This book has important implications for religion. The great religions have always spoken of the belief in God and an afterlife. The evidence of near-death experiences points to an afterlife and a universe guided by a vastly loving intelligence. Near-death experiences consistently reveal that death is not an end but rather a transition to an afterlife. This is a profoundly inspiring thought for us all and for our loved ones. I hope that this book helps to promote such an encouraging message.” He even feels that an understand of our common end in the afterlife ought to be able to bridge us to worldwide peace.

Stuff and nonsense. Let me know how that works out for you, Dr. Long. World peace through NDEs may be one of the most ridiculous things I’ve heard in a long time. Of course as a Christian I have to grapple with asking exactly what a NDE is. It seems irrefutable that many people, when gravely injured and often when clinically dead, do experience something. The accounts are too common and too consistent to ignore entirely. So we see that such experiences do appear to exist and that they seem to lead directly away from what the Bible teaches us. What recourse do we have, then, but to state with some confidence that these experiences are somehow a trick of Satan? And would it not be just like the Enemy to use such an experience to convince people of their own divinity–to lead people as far from what is true as is possible? I am persuaded that NDEs do exist but that they exist to deceive, to provide false comfort, to provide false hope, to enslave, to trap, to destroy.

I think Amazon already knows this. Evidence of the Afterlife is filed under Books > Religion & Spirituality > Occult. Well done.

Verdict: Read it if you want to see how Satan continues to ensnare and enslave.

It is a rare occasion that I find it difficult to point out any redeeming features in a book–when I struggle to find a single positive to write in a review. Unfortunately Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God is one of those books–one that is so monstrously bad, so hopelessly awful, so wretchedly miserable, that it took concerted effort just to finish it. Heck, even the cover stinks–a pile of religiously-significant books hovering at a strange angle over a plain background. I tell you what: I will concede the font. The book is set in Granjon, a very nice, classical font that is very consistent with the earliest Garamond type faces. It is classy and classical but without being antique. But that is as good as the book gets.

I can save you thirty-five bucks and many hours of your life by telling you that 99% of what Armstrong has to say about God and religion she squeezes into the Introduction and the Epilogue, which together take up just 23 of the 340 pages of this book. There she spews forth what she really believes about God and those who seek to follow him. Though she writes about all faiths, she focuses almost exclusively on Christianity. The reader will learn, among other things: that nobody before modern times was foolish enough to believe that the Bible should be read as fact, as if the Creation account has any value beyond a mythological attempt to describe the world’s beginning; that the doctrine of the infallibility of Scripture was unknown until the 1870′s when Hodge and Warfield dreamed it up; that Socratic dialogue with atheists would help us understand how we can be more faithful believers in God; that truth is found not by understanding or believing, but by doing; that the purpose of religion is to discover new capacities of mind and heart; that the danger to religion and the danger to the world is not religious adherents, but fundamentalist believers–those who believe in the exclusivity of their faith and who fall into old beliefs such as the infallibility of their scriptures. And that is just a sampling of a mere 23 pages.

The rest of the book is an extended revisionist look at the history of religion in general and the Christian faith in particular. Armstrong seeks to show that the modern Christian God (I hesitate to capitalize God in the way she uses the name) is vastly different from the “unknown” God of pre-modern times. God was once mysterious and unknown, so transcendent, so other that people could not hope to really know who he is or how he acted. But then modernism had to come along and ruin a perfectly good deity by insisting that God could be known, that he even desired to be known. What the author believes we need to do, of course, is return to God as a mystery, to God as an unknowable force who combines the best of all the world religions. Along the way she pauses to offer a few words about nearly every religious leader and every philosopher who ever uttered God’s name. It is absolutely exhausting and, for simplistic old-school fundie Christians like myself, utterly exasperating. With her facts on the basics of the Christian faith so far from the truth and with her obvious bias, I actually found myself reading deliberately trying not to comprehend, not to retain, what she said. After all, having proven herself utterly untrustworthy in the basics, how could I trust her in anything else?

The Case for God, then, is in no way a case for the God of the Bible or, really, for the God of most other faiths. Rather, it is a defense of making the idea of God respectable again, even if it means radically changing what we mean by that name. It is an absolute mess and easily one of the most boring, most obnoxious books I’ve ever read.

Verdict: Skip it.