THE CASE FOR AN AFTERLIFE
By
J. J. Jennings
Copyright 2013, J. J. Jennings
All rights reserved
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-1747-9
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Dedication
Dedicated to
Those who search
And
Those who find
Their own
Personal Truth.
*****
After Life
“After Life,”
Friends say,
“Death is
Inky Blackness,
Like
The night sky.”
“If that’s so,”
I say,
“Are we
The Bright Stars
In
That Night Sky –
After Life?”
Anon.
*****
Introduction
Why publish another “afterlife” book?
A Google internet search for “afterlife books and articles” produced 3,480,000 results, so there’s already plenty of “afterlife” material out there.
The problem is, some of that material argues adamantly for an afterlife, while some of it argues adamantly against an afterlife.
It seems we can’t agree on what constitutes credible evidence of an afterlife. Take the readings given by mediums, for example. Some of us feel those readings provide bona fide evidence of an afterlife. Others of us say those readings are flawed because the mediums employ “hot” and “cold” reading techniques designed to convince their eager and cooperative clients that departed friends or relatives are in communication with them – even when they’re not.
To agree on what constitutes credible evidence, we must first agree on how we define “credible evidence”. We have to agree on the criteria for “credible evidence”.
However, there are different types of afterlife evidence – not just readings by mediums, but sightings of apparitions, bodily possessions, and past-life regressions, just to name a few – and the criteria to define what is credible are likely to vary by each type of evidence.
And that’s not all.The criteria selected by some of us to define a given type of “credible evidence” may not be rigorous enough to satisfy others of us.We need some way to agree on the sufficiency of the criteria – We need a way to decide whether the criteria are rigorous enough.
This book examines five different types of evidence in the published afterlife material, and offers a set of rigorous criteria for each type that hopefully is sufficient to qualify the evidence as either “credible” or “not credible”. Finally, the book proposes the scientific collection and qualification of even more credible evidence, of many types, in an attempt to establish what the afterlife is and is not.
If we can agree on the types of afterlife evidence to be considered, and if we can agree on our approaches for gathering and evaluating that evidence, then maybe we can come closer to agreeing on whether or not there is an afterlife, and what that afterlife may be like.
We’ll start in Chapter 1 with an overview of our current search approach within the afterlife material already published.
*****
Chapter 1. How and Where Do We Search for Afterlife Evidence?
How do we search for “credible” afterlife evidence?
For every type of afterlife evidence in our search, our approach involves the same four steps:
1.Define the type of afterlife evidence being considered in terms of its inclusions and exclusions. For example, in our search for “Possessions” as a type of evidence, we include those cases where the body of a living person is apparently under the control of a deceased person, but we exclude those cases where demonic possession is involved – since demons are not necessarily deceased human beings (given demons are part of our belief system, of course).
2.Establish a set of criteria to evaluate whether or not the evidence is to be viewed as “credible”. For example, one of the criteria established for “Apparitions” might be: “The sighting of an apparition in a potentially staged setting such as a séance or a ‘haunted house’ should not be viewed as credible.”
3.Conduct searches among the published material for the type of evidence defined in Step 1., using the criteria established in Step 2., to determine whether there is at least one example of “credible evidence” of that type. If there isn’t one example that may be viewed as credible, assume there are none to be found. If there is one example that may be viewed as credible, assume there may be others. (Note that this is a variation of a widely-used statistical technique known as “hypothesis testing”, where the practitioner starts by assuming a “Null Hypothesis”, and only rejects that hypothesis when there is sufficient evidence to support an “Alternative Hypothesis”. (1))
4.Identify interesting examples from the searches in Step 3. that may also contribute to the discussion of results. If there are examples that satisfy the majority of the criteria, but not all of the criteria, it might be useful to discuss the implications of such examples.
Since our search results depend so heavily on the criteria established at Step 2., how do we attempt to make those criteria sufficiently rigorous?
There is a concept imbedded in our United States legal system that seems very useful in our discussion of “sufficiently rigorous criteria”. According to that concept, a case must be…“proven beyond the point at which a reasonable, average, prudent person would be convinced…” – “beyond a reasonable doubt”, in other words. (2)
Where do we find criteria that would convince “a reasonable, average, prudent person”? We develop a set of criteria using comments made by skeptics as they address their issues with a given type of afterlife evidence.Then we supplement those criteria with additional criteria of our own. We make a concerted effort to establish as complete a set of criteria as we possibly can, recognizing that any such effort is always subjective to some degree.
Take a representative set of skeptics’ comments about “Past-Life Regressions”, for example. (3) Briefly, those comments suggest that “past lives” being recalled by patients under hypnosis are most likely one of the following:
1.Real or false memories of experiences in those patients’