We are delighted to offer an excerpt from Father Martin Hilbert’s book for Discovery Institute Press, A Catholic Case for Intelligent Design. This article is adapted from Chapter 7.

A body of evidence highlighting the difference between the brain and the mind is that of near-death experiences (NDE). NDEs, as their name suggests, are the experiences of those who have had close brushes with death, and yet survived the experience to talk about it. In these cases, the patients lost normal consciousness — some were declared clinically dead — and yet they described their experiences from that period as being more real than dreams and sometimes even more real than the world that we all inhabit. Although such cases may have been around since prehistoric times — and some researchers even suggest that they may have given rise to the popular artistic images of angels — it is only with the rise of modern medicine that the number of cases has skyrocketed. That should not be surprising, because modern life-support systems have made it possible for people to recover from trauma or disease that would have killed them in earlier times.

Even the Mainstream Media Noticed

At first, the medical profession tended to downplay these experiences as hallucinations caused by a distressed brain. It was also possible to cast doubts on the veracity of the person describing the experience. There are several bestselling books written by those who claim to have experienced an NDE, so there is an obvious financial incentive to make up stories. But the large number of cases and some of the details mentioned by these NDErs have finally succeeded in attracting the attention of mainstream publications such as Psychology Today. There Steven Taylor wrote:

NDEs have never been satisfactorily explained in neurobiological terms. Various theories have been suggested, such as hallucinations caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain, undetected brain activity during the period when the brain appears not to be functioning, the release of endorphins, a psychological “depersonalization” in response to intense stress, and so on. All of these theories have been found to be problematic.

It would take us too far afield to discuss the various NDEs in detail, but a few comments should indicate their relevance to the discussion of the nature of the mind. First, according to one skeptical researcher, Christof Koch, both those who are religious and those who claimed no prior religious belief are well represented among those who have reported NDEs. This tends to rule out that the brain is drawing on prior prejudices and desires.

In fact, NDEs can be problematic for devout Catholics if they are understood as real beginnings of the journey to Heaven which got derailed through the machinations of doctors. The great majority of reported NDEs — upwards of 85 percent — are intensely affirming, peaceful, and pleasurable. One would think that most people would require purgation of their sinful attachments before enjoying the bliss of Heaven. Nevertheless, there are some horrific examples of NDEs as well, suggesting descents into Hell or perhaps Purgatory. It has also been suggested, with some evidence, that people who experience horrific NDEs may be likely to suppress them, meaning that the percentage of horrific NDEs is much higher than remembered and reported.

An Enticement or a Warning?

If one sees the NDE as an enticement or a warning or just an expansion of one’s vision of the world, there need not be anything contrary to the Christian faith in them. They could be special acts of God’s providence to lead people to salvation, either by offering a carrot or warning with a stick. And, in fact, those who have had NDEs tend to become more spiritually inclined and less fearful of death. Mere hallucinations do not tend to have such permanent effects on people.

A common feature of many NDEs is that the person has a sense of watching himself from a distance, such as the ceiling of an operating room. It is not just a matter of them experiencing the scene from a different perspective, for in many of these cases the eyes of the patient are taped shut so as to prevent injury from the bright lights in the operating room. The details that such people provide are of great interest because they can be verified by the doctors and nurses and often they are exactly correct.

One famous case involved Vicki Umipeg of Seattle who had been born blind. She was 21 years old in 1973 when she was critically injured in a car accident and was clinically dead for about four minutes. That is, her heart had stopped and she had lost consciousness. She describes herself as looking down from the ceiling and seeing herself being worked on. She was terrified at the vision because she had never experienced sight, but quickly adjusted to the situation. In particular, she mentioned that the woman on the emergency room table had a ring on the same finger on which she usually wears her ring, so she recognized her to be herself. She was also able to report the conversations of the doctors. After she was resuscitated, she remained blind. This “disconnect” of the mind from the body is certainly a challenge to a purely materialist explanatory scheme.

Another often reported feature is that people see deceased loved ones during their NDEs. Pim van Lommel was a Dutch physician specializing in NDEs. He reports the case of a five-year-old girl who had fallen into a coma through meningitis. In her experience, she saw a girl who was about ten years old. The girls embraced and the older girl introduced herself as her sister, Reitje, named for their grandmother. When the five-year-old woke from the coma, she related the story to her parents, who panicked and left the room. They came back later and admitted that they had a girl named Reitje who had died earlier of poisoning. Up until then, they had kept it a secret, to be revealed when their children could begin to understand.

Multiple books could be filled with similarly well-attested cases in which the hallucination explanation fails to account for all the facts. Will such evidence convince the committed materialist that the mind is a non-material reality? Probably not. The philosopher Neal Grossman reports a conversation he had about NDEs with one such type.

Exasperated, I asked, “What will it take, short of having a near-death experience yourself, to convince you that it’s real?”

Very nonchalantly, without batting an eye, the response was: “Even if I were to have a near-death experience myself, I would conclude that I was hallucinating, rather than believe that my mind can exist independently of my brain.”

That kind of attitude is exactly what Jesus described in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man: “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead” (Luke 16:31).

Terminal Lucidity

Another line of evidence for the immaterial nature of the mind comes from the widely observed fact that people with severe mental deficiencies sometimes become perfectly clear and sensible a short while before they die. It happens often enough that it has its own term in the field of hospice care: “terminal lucidity.” One of the more famous such cases is that of Anna Katharina (Käthe) Ehmer (1896 – 1922). Friedrich Happich, a Protestant minister in charge of the institution where Anna lived from the age of six until her death, and who had known her for many years, provides this picture of Käthe:

Käthe was among the patients with the most severe mental disabilities who have ever lived in our institution. From birth on, she was seriously retarded. She had never learned to speak a single word. She stared for hours on a particular spot, then she fidgeted for hours without a break. She gorged her food, fouled herself day and night, uttered an animal-like sound, and slept. In all the time she lived with us, we have never seen that she had taken notice of her environment even for a second. We had to amputate one of her legs, [as] she wasted away.

So, it was quite a surprise to see a great change in her shortly before her death. Happich writes:

One day I was called by one of our physicians, who is respected both as a scientist and a psychiatrist. He said: “Come immediately to Käthe, she is dying!” When we entered the room together, we did not believe our eyes and ears. Käthe, who had never spoken a single word, being entirely mentally disabled from birth on, sang dying songs to herself. Specifically, she sang over and over again, “Where does the soul find its home, its peace? Peace, peace, heavenly peace!” For half an hour she sang. Her face, up to then so stultified, was transfigured and spiritualized. Then, she quietly passed away. Like myself and the nurse who had cared for her, the physician had tears in his eyes.

Michael Nahm and Bruce Greyson have carefully examined the evidence for this case and think Happich and the physician mentioned are credible witnesses, although the historical distance makes it impossible to question witnesses. However, there are more recent cases, which Nahm and Greyson report in another paper. Here is one of several:

Morse and Perry (1990) reported the case of a five-year-old boy who had been in a coma for three weeks dying from a malignant brain tumor, during which time he was almost constantly surrounded by various family members. Finally, on the advice of their minister, the family told the comatose child that they would miss him but he had their permission to die. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the boy regained consciousness, thanked the family for letting him go, and told them he would be dying soon. He did in fact die the next day.

If the materialist view that the mind is just an aspect of the brain were true, it is not likely that such bouts of mental clarity and verbal capacity would be the result of a brain in the process of shutting down.

Editor’s note: All references may be found in the published edition of A Catholic Case for Intelligent Design.