Posted on 04 August 2012, 14:28

If you missed it in the news last week, The John Templeton Foundation, a philanthropic organization, awarded a three-year, $5-million grant to John M. Fischer, a humanities professor at the University of California, Riverside, to explore a wide range of issues related to “immortality.”  Fischer is quoted:  “People have been thinking about immortality throughout history.  We have a deep human need to figure out what happens to us after death.  Much of the discussion has been in literature, especially in fantasy and science fiction, and in theology in the context of an afterlife, heaven, hell, purgatory and karma.  No one has taken a comprehensive and sustained look at immortality that brings together the science, theology, and philosophy.”

The initial release states that all recent research in the near-death experience and “other experiences” is anecdotal.  Fischer is quoted in a Los Angeles Times article as saying that the project is not aimed at proving anything.  He described himself as skeptical about an afterlife, but believes it could be a good thing. 

As I have great respect for the John Templeton Foundation, I hate to be negative, but I was sickened when I read the release, especially Fischer’s words.  If he is unaware of all the comprehensive and sustained research carried out over the past 160 years – research in mediumship, reincarnation, near-death experiences, and out-of-body experiences – how can he possibly have the expertise to head up such a research project?  What is he going to be able to come up with in three years that others haven’t already discovered, especially if he is starting from scratch, as he must be if he doesn’t believe there has been anything of value produced to date? 

I can summarize what Fischer will say in three years right now. Since the Templeton Foundation seems to be pro spirituality, he will not totally dismiss survival, but will say it remains a mystery which science will hopefully solve in the future. He will confirm that certain phenomena, such as the near-death experience, suggest something more than a physical body, but will add that much more research is necessary. In the mean time, we should all live in the moment, love our neighbors, and not concern ourselves with what comes after death.  That will be the sage advice coming from a $5-million study.

One might infer from Fischer’s statement that he has never heard of men like Crookes, Barrett, Myers, Hodgson, Lodge, Richet, Hyslop, Crawford, Geley, Stevenson, and all the distinguished NDE researchers from the past 35 years – men and women who dedicated themselves to such research in spite of criticism from their scientific peers. Hodgson spent the better part of 18 years studying one woman, Leonora Piper, while Hyslop devoted the last two decades of his life to full-time psychical researcher. How anyone who has studied their detailed research reports can say that their research was not comprehensive and sustained, or just anecdotal, is beyond me. 

Of course, many scientists, who haven’t really studied it, find it easier to dismiss it as outdated.  Many assume that those distinguished researchers of yesteryear were simply duped by a bunch of charlatans. If I were a non-believer, I would say that all those distinguished men are rolling over in their graves, but since I am a believer I suspect that they are shaking their heads in disgust from some lofty perch, assuming that they are still within vibrational range of us to care enough. 

The fact is that those researchers of yesteryear offered evidence that is likely as good as we will ever get.  Studies in the NDE, OBE, and past-lives have added to their research, but their work formed a strong nucleus around which other research could add and confirm. Let me quote a few of those pioneers of psychical research:

Richard Hodgson:  “I had but one object, to discover fraud and trickery…of unmasking [Mrs. Piper].  Today, I am prepared to say that I believe in the possibility of receiving messages from what is called the world of spirits. I entered the house profoundly materialistic, not believing in the continuance of life after death; today I say I believe. The truth has been given to me in such a way as to remove from me the possibility of a doubt.”  (Dr. Hodgson taught philosophy at Cambridge before taking over the American branch of the Society for Psychical Research.)

James H. Hyslop:  “Personally I regard the fact of survival after death as scientifically proved.  I agree that this opinion is not upheld in scientific quarters.  But this is neither our fault nor the fault of the facts.  Evolution was not believed until long after it was proved.  The fault lay with those who were too ignorant or too stubborn to accept the facts.  History shows that every intelligent man who has gone into this investigation, if he gave it adequate examination at all, has come out believing in spirits; this circumstance places the burden or proof on the shoulders of the skeptic.” (Dr. Hyslop was professor of logic and ethics at Columbia University before becoming a full-time psychical researcher.)

William James: “I am able, while still holding to all the lower principles of interpretation, to imagine the process as more complex, and to share the feelings with which Hodgson came at last to regard it after his many years of familiarity, the feeling which Professor Hyslop shares, and which most of those who have good sittings are promptly inspired with.”  (Dr. James was professor of anatomy and philosophy at Harvard and a pioneer in psychology.)

Alfred Russel Wallace:  “My position is that the phenomena of Spiritualism in their entirety do not require further confirmation.  They are proved quite as well as facts are proved in other sciences.”  (Wallace was co-originator with Charles Darwin of the natural selection theory of evolution.)

Sir Oliver Lodge: (below)  “I tell you with all my strength of the conviction which I can muster that we do persist…I say it on distinct scientific grounds.  I say it because I know that certain friends of mine still exist, because I have talked with them…The dead are not dead, but alive.”  (Dr. Lodge was a professor of physics and pioneer in electricity and radio.) 

Sir William Barrett:  “I am personally convinced that the evidence we have published decidedly demonstrates (1) the existence of a spiritual world, (2) survival after death, and (3) of occasional communication from those who have passed over… It is however hardly possible to convey to others who have not had a similar experience an adequate idea of the strength and cumulative force of the evidence that has compelled [my] belief.” (Sir William was a professor of physics at the Royal College in Dublin.) 

Sir William Crookes:  “[The phenomena] point to the existence of another order of human life continuous with this, and demonstrate the possibility in certain circumstances of communication between this world and the next.” (Crookes was a world-renowned chemist and a pioneer in radiology.)

Cesare Lombroso:  “I am ashamed and grieved at having opposed with so much tenacity the possibility of psychic facts – the facts exist and I boast of being a slave to facts.  There can be no doubt that genuine psychical phenomena are produced by intelligences totally independent of the psychic and the parties present at the sittings.” (Dr. Lombroso was a psychiatrist and founder of the science of criminology.)

Charles Richet:  “It seems to me the facts are undeniable. I am convinced that I have been present at realities. Certainly I cannot say in what materialization consists. I am ready to maintain that there is something profoundly mysterious in it which will change from top to bottom our ideas on nature and on life.” (Dr. Richet was a professor of physiology and the 1913 Nobel Prize winner in medicine)

Camille Flammarion: “I do not hesitate to affirm my conviction, based on personal examination of the subject, that any man who declares the phenomena to be impossible is one who speaks without knowing what he is talking about; and, also that any man accustomed to scientific observation – provided that his mind is not biased by preconceived opinions – may acquire a radical and absolute certainty of the reality of the facts alluded to.”  (Flammarion was a pioneer astronomer.)

Robert Crookall:  “The whole of the available evidence is explicable on the hypothesis of the survival of the human soul in a Soul Body. There is no longer a ‘deadlock’ or ‘stalemate’ on the question of survival. On the contrary, survival is as well established as the theory of evolution.”  (Dr. Crookall was a respected British botanist and geologist.)

Enrico Morselli:  “If for many years academic science has depreciated the whole category of facts…so much the worse for science. And worse still for the scientists who have remained deaf and blind before affirmations, not of credulous sectarians, but of serious and worthy observers, such as Crookes, Lodge, and Richet. I, myself, as far as my modest power went, contributed to this obstinate skepticism until the day when I was enabled to break the chains in which my absolutist preconceptions had bound my judgment. I was a bitter skeptic with regard to the objective reality of the phenomena. Today, furnished with an experience, after long and mature reflections on what I have seen and touched with my hand, I have changed my belief.”  (Dr. Morselli was Director of the Clinic of Nervous and Mental Disease at the University of Genoa.)

All of the above-quoted researchers were fully aware of the alternative explanations to what they observed – fraud, telepathy, and what later came to be called superpsi. Though not subject to easy qualitative and quantitative analyses, the evidence is empirical and as solid today as it was in their day. But mainstream science resisted and ignored it.  “The aim of science has been for the most part a study of mechanism, the mechanism whereby results are achieved, an investigation into the physical processes which go on, and which appear to be coextensive with nature,” Lodge explained the ignorance. “Any theory which seems to involve the action of Higher Beings, or of any unknown entity controlling and working the mechanism, is apt to be extruded or discountenanced as a relic of primitive superstition, coming down from times when such infantile explanations were prevalent.”

Instead of attempting to reinvent the wheel, the Templeton Foundation should get someone for a fraction of that $5-million to collect and collate all the research that has already been done on the subject of immortality and then explain it to the public in a manner that is understandable to the average person.  At the same time, science needs to consider the possibility that uncertainty might very well be a good thing.  Nothing addresses that better than a message given to Victor Hugo by a spirit when the great author asked why God does not better reveal himself.  “Because doubt is the instrument which forges the human spirit,” the communicating entity told him. “If the day were to come when the human spirit no longer doubted, the human soul would fly off and leave the plough behind, for it would have acquired wings.  The earth would lie fallow.  Now, God is the sower and man the harvester.  The celestial seed demands that the human ploughshare remain in the furrow of life.” 

Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After we Die, Transcending the Titanic, and The Afterlife Explorers Volume 1., published by White Crow Books and available from Amazon and all good online bookstores.

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Next blog:  August 20 —The best evidence for life after death  

The first thing that we should teach children in school to set them up for a life, on this very low energy planet,is to explain that everyone lives on different energy levels and those of higher energies can control energies of there own level and those under them but cannot control those above. So it is obvious that people,no matter what they think they are or how important they think they are, can only pick up information on their level. The masters can only explain to the pupils on their level as they would not understand the level higher than themselves. There is no such thing as death but a change from one energy level to another. Now here’s the important bit. The ABSOLUTE or whatever you want to call it, does not have to do anything as it is everything that is and will be. It is the creature called man that has to do the work to move from one energy level to another. Man is becoming more lazy and complacent and is relying more on materialistic illusions. This is nothing to do with the three satanic energies on and around this planet politics, religion and big business but on the WISDOM teachings that began when man first emerged and is trying to become HU-MAN from his present of being Animal man. As important to children is to teach about UNCONDITIONAL giving and living as this will open them up to the reality that they gain everything and lose nothing. Enough for now. All love Peter.

i look at a lot of paranormal shows on tv. i realize this is tv but does anyone believe they are picking up any creadable evidence such as the apparation of manuel bookender walking thru the field on a recent ghost hunters episode.in short does anyone believe this is the real mccoy so to say or is it just a tv show.sure would like some serious discussion on this.

thanks
john o

Erin,

Thanks for your interesting comments.  Coincidentally, I am now putting the finishing touches on a book about Leonora Piper.  I know a person in Florida who just wrote a screenplay about her, but he hasn’t been able to find a producer.

I also agree!  I’m an atmospheric scientist—a DATA-driven person—and I was convinced by the existing evidence.  And it wasn’t because of a credulous mindset, lack of awareness of proper research techniques, or believing something because it was what I wanted to hear.  I was never a pseudo-skeptic, but there was a time about two years ago, before I discovered the psi and afterlife research, when I had a serious crisis of faith in survival BECAUSE I needed data to still “believe” and was not aware of any.  I started with NDE because that was all I’d heard about, and because, yes, I am now ashamed to admit that I regarded the term “psychic” as synonymous with “fraud.”  (I guess there was a pseudo-skeptical aspect to my thinking then.)  What I read about NDE was good, pretty convincing, but there was still this little voice saying, “But what if there IS some residual brain activity that doesn’t register on EEG that could account for the real-time perceptions?  What if the accounts of apparent ESP during these experiences are really just lucky guesses/latent memories?”  I still hadn’t looked at anything except NDE and OBE, and that little voice would not shut up, so I still had some doubt.  As a scientist, I couldn’t completely dismiss it, and that doubt nagged at me.  I recall, one night about two months into my research, mentally screaming something like, “God, if you exist and survival is true, why are you letting this happen to me?  If it’s real and I’m not just talking to my own head, show me something that convinces me.  Give me a personal experience, or point me to data that I can’t argue against!”  I haven’t had a personal experience, but I did indeed get pointed to the rest of the data.  Somehow or other I found Zammit’s website, which exposed me to overviews of, well, pretty much all the really good stuff that I had been utterly ignorant of before that.  I didn’t immediately take his word for it (being a retired attorney, he takes the tone of an advocate or lobbyist, which certainly has value, but as a scientist I needed something more sober), but I found the primary sources and read them myself.  To be honest, two specific cases were all it really took to convince me:  Hodgson/Pellew/Piper and R-101.  They were the best to me… though, of course, the rest of the afterlife data—as well as the exceptional psi data to support it outside of an afterlife context—shore them up even more.  If only social sciences and clinical psychology were as replicable!  I don’t really have those doubts about NDE anymore, having found that NDE is actually just a supporting part of a vast body of research rather than the end-all and be-all of survival data, but the now-amusing thing is, NDE could be debunked and it wouldn’t even matter to my belief in survival, because the rest of it is so good!  Yep, I was pointed to data I couldn’t argue against, all right.  And it was not because of being a “believer” or “wishful thinker.”  I even looked at what the “skeptics” had to say before realizing that their arguments were bogus.  I don’t even consider myself a particularly trusting person, or a natural optimist, but I was convinced.  The data are already there and they convince just about anyone who looks at them with an open mind.  We just need them disseminated.  I have about come around to the conclusion that what is really needed is a sympathetic Hollywood director to make a documentary or historically accurate movie about some particularly striking case, like Hodgson/Pellew/Piper.  THAT would force open discussion of the subject in the media.

I agree, Mike—Fischer will probably end his conclusions with a statement that “more research is needed,” as most studies do!

Now that the weather is getting more and more bizarre and islands are sinking beneath the waves, people are finally starting to figure out that global warming is real.  I don’t know what more the Other Side can do to convince these people that they are real too.  Humans are such odd creatures.

I’d say forget mediumship of all kinds, esp. the physical mediumship stuff (which will get no one anywhere and will cause more trouble than it’s worth).

Instead, spend $10 on a blackened mirror and a 10 watt light bulb and replicate the psychomanteum work or Raymond Moody and Diane Arcangel.

That, and the IADC work of Alan Botkin.

Only direct experience is going to prove anything to anybody.

Robert Simpson is essentially right. He’s put on the boxing gloves with the intention of nothing but knock outs. The problem is, though, who has both the qualifications and the courage to get up on the white horse with jousting gear and attire as the Prime Speaker? I think we would need a consortium or collective, rather like The Borg but on an intellectual level. So many perspectives are nonetheless possible. I’d be glad to join. Anyone else interested? Paul Biscop (Ph.D., Cultural Anthropology; MA (Eng. Lit) MA (Sociology/Anthropology); ATR (Registered Art Therapist, American Art Therapy Assoc. 1978); BCATR (British Columbia Art Therapist Registered 2010); Spiritualist medium since 1969; Resident Medium, Two Worlds Spiritualist Centre, Nanaimo, BC, Canada. Not usually so bold about my qualifications, but could I join please?

Here here Robert!  Excellent rousing comment.  Michael wrote an excellent article on the AECES website which basically states the afterlife has been proven by scientists over and over but when they die a new waive of sceptics basically wipes the evidence slate clean.  It’s a crime against humanity that the religions and scientists of the world are turning a blind eye to all the evidence that has accumulated.  It has nothing to do with objectivity but preconceived beliefs.  Let’s face it most people are either lazy and won’t take the time to do some serious research into humanities greatest question or are sheep and just listen to what thier religious leader or scientist tells them.  I have been studying this topic daily for the past 2 years and it amazes me how much I still don’t know.  The question is how do we get the word out and make people care about this?  Sadly here in the US, most people are only concerned with where they are going to eat their next meal or which celebrity is dating the other. 

Michaels article : http://www.aeces.info/Legacy-Section/Histories/Survival Research.pdf

To Robert Simpson:

Your contribution was absolutely terrific!!!

Would you please give us your contact information ...

Thanks/RBB

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

It’s recently emerged that a Russian billionaire is about to spend a vast amount of money researching implanting parts of brains into robots. Despite the overwhelming evidence that consciousness (ourselves) is non local.

The phrase ‘more money than sense’ springs to mind. Just let them get on with it. Plenty of intelligent and the well versed in these matters continuing their research. I believe these two items of ‘news’ to be merely sensationalist clap trap.

It’s enough already. The whole movement needs one leading spokesman to say to the entire world, “the afterlife is proved.” there is no more time to waste on cynical goddamned idiots and religious fanatics who know absoluteley nothing about the spirit world. All of human history has led to this exact moment in time. The fate of all future generations, and whether or not they will live in a decent world, is dependent on the entire human race realizing that all goddamned religions are wrong. Damn it, all of them! There are only two things that are true, and there has always been only two things that are true, with respect to human life on this planet. We are all, every last one of us, except for test tube babies, the result of the physical act of carnal lust. From the lowest to the highest we are all just the result of the union of egg and sperm, with respect to the physical. No one is or ever has been any more than anyone else. Some have spent their lives in infinitely more elevated pursuits than others, but none has ever been intrinsicallly more than another. That is the first truth for all of us. Your father got his hands on your mother, and here you are. The only other truth is that we all survive death. From king to untouchable, we survive, period. It is imperative that all persons who come into this physical world be taught that their harmony and happiness in the next phase of existence is solely dependent on good behavior while they are here. All must become decent, or the whole world is going to end in flames, and sooner rather than later. The time has come for a select few who know the truth to declare the debate over. We know who we are, and we need to state with authority once and for all that no further ambiguities on he subject can be tolerated. We ont give a damn anymore about those who will not declare the debate over. Men like Findlay knew that ultimately the fate of human life on this planet depends completely on the development of first class physical mediumship. But it also depends once and for all on men and women who no longer allow debate on survival. The time has come to move to absolutes in this area of human knowledge. Every new study announced, every new Johnny come lately with their announcement of a new project, only delays the progress that could have come 100 years ago. The problem is that no one, that is no one who is highly educated and accomplished will just once and for all come out and put their reputation on the line and say that survival improved, period. Even those contemporary writers of today who cover this subject still couch their speech with talk of excellent evidence in favor of survival. Few say that goddamn it, it’s a proven fact! No one wants to declare themself an authority on the subject, and infallible when it comes to life after death. Actually, there are a few such bold men now living who declare the afterlife, and don’t give a damn what none else thinks of them. Of course Victor Zammit and Michael Roll are two. Well, I therefore here and now declare myself another infallible expert on the subject of survival. We live on after death. Period. I don’t give a damn what anyone says about what happens at the instant of death, who has not taken the time to read Findlay, Randall, admiral Moore, Borgia, and the myriad other fearless giants who were not afraid to declare the afterlife proven not on a whim, but rather after years of back breaking research and documentation. Fraud? Of course there has been fraud, this is Earth. It’s done, it’s proven. If you don’t have the courage to stand,on that, get out of the field. The next step is to have one man or woman declared the world authority on afterlife knowledge, and then to begin to push this message down the throats of the people of the world, and all governments. We have to declare this truth with an unrelenting violence, the violence of the pen and the word processor, and the podium.

Great article Mike. I agree with you one hundred percent. Let’s just hope that Dr. Fischer is indeed being guided by the higher realms and not by ego or a preconceived Templetonian agenda. The planet is in very serious trouble so the time for them to act (if they can) is now. The quest for truth must be at the forefront of this investigation. Hopefully, he will have the intestinal fortitude to do what is ‘right’ and not just what is expedient or self serving.

There is overwhelming evidence for survival, but the skeptics refuse to accept it or even study it.

Repeatedly they take a selective approach in order to reinforce their prejudices. Take NDEs for example. They say they are hallucinations brought about by lack of oxygen to the brain or drugs administered in hospitals.

They ignore all the evidence to the contrary, including OBEs where there was no question of drugs or lack of oxygen. They dismiss as ‘anecdotal’ the numerous cases where people unconscious and flatlining have during an NDE seen, heard and later accurately reported what happened in and around them while in this state, in operating theaters, adjoining rooms, etc.

Materialization seances also need scientific investigation, as those held in the complete dark do raise suspicion of fraud. However it is quite possible to investigate these scientifically without intrusions into the seance room which might affect the phenomena. For instance, infra-red cameras outside the room observing thru glass.

Quite apart from all this, scientific and medical studies in the old Soviet Union suggested the existence of an astral body in all living things; termed ‘bioplasma’ in view of the atheistic nature of Soviet culture. Quantum physics experimentation suggests that no matter can exist without a conscious observer, and that sub-atomic particles revert to ‘wave function’ or ‘waves of probability’ when there is no conscious observer.

This is tantamount to saying that Consciousness is at the heart of everything, is non-material, is the creator and organizer of matter, and that matter is, in fact, an illusion or virtual reality created by Mind. The very term ‘waves of probability’ suggests that the building blocks of matter remain just a possibility or idea until the thoughts of a conscious entity convert them into sub-atomic particles. The human brain, being composed of matter, cannot therefore be the same as Mind or the originator of consciousness. This must be some form of energy, which must therefore be independent of matter and survive death. Energy cannot be destroyed.

Given all of the above, the thing I find most interesting is this Fischer’s true motives. He’s have to have just fallen out of the proverbial gooseberry bush not to be at least aware of much of the evidence already gathered, particularly in light of the huge amount of money up for grabs. What’s he up to.

Also, I’d first read this on NNHE Pulse, which I skim occasionally, and had replied there how constantly confounded I am by the total disregard for Eastern philosophies (and the people who live by them, in the East), which are proving to be the forerunner of Quantum physics.

All rather smacks of Western arrogance ‘Oh we’ll show the little Asians what’s what once WE’VE proved it all ...’

I think this guy’s (Fischer) comments were absolutely bizarre. “Lets find out if it’s all nonsense” (or something like that). Duh !!! He appears to know nothing about the subject, where on earth has he been living, outer Mongolia ?

I don’t care what he comes up with, what’s on the table already is more than enough for me.

Coyd,

Thank you for your comment.  I don’t know what Fischer knows or doesn’t know, but when he says that there have been no comprehensive or sustained studies, I infer that he is unaware of the comprehensive and sustained studies by the SPR in the cases of Leonora Piper, Gladys Osborne Leonard and a number of other mediums.  Actually, the “M” word (mediumship)is not even mentioned in the media release.  I suspect it is probably too “occult” for them to deal with.

As for replication, I think it is a matter of semantics. Although no two sittings were alike in the study of Mrs. Piper, for example, there was replication in the sense that the trance was observed by various researchers, the manner of communication was observed, and various facts were repeated at different sittings, etc. It might not be replication in the laboratory sense, but it is replication in the legal sense (repeated behavior) or in the meteorite sense. No two meteorites are alike, but when you see hundreds of meterorites there is a replication of the phenomenon, though not of the same meteorite.  Again, it might just be a matter of definition. The last I heard science had accepted meteorites as real based on more than anecdotal evidence. But I am just a blind groper who is often wrong.

The total dark of the seance room has been a great handicap to providing modern unchallengeable proof of materialisation. People remain suspicious of the photos of ectoplasm dripping from mediums’ mouths, and the old Katie King ‘spirit’ photos of Sir William Crookes, now over 100 hundred years old. If $5 million is to be spent it could hardly be better used than in finding the technology to record in the dark, providing images that can be replicated time and again with spirit cooperation, and which cannot be photoshopped because it is broadcast ‘live’. What we need is irrefutable fact and the job is done! $5 million is a lot of money, why waste it?.

Before having read the comments by others above, I was about to e-mail and suggest that you and Miles Edward Allen send an AECES response and this blog to The Templeton Foundation, Dr. Fischer, the editor of the University of California Riverside newsletter, the Wall Street Journal and all other media sources in the United States and Canada that may or may not have printed the news of this $5 million grant.

Mike:

Are you sure Fischer is unaware of the past investigators you cite?  If he is calling the evidence anecdotal as opposed to replicable, isn’t he right?  Scintific knowledge is often called systematic, and this could be seen to require replicability.

If so, where Hyslop refers to the afterlife as scientifically proved, and Lodge to scientific grounds, this could only mean that denying good anecdotal evidence is unscientific, not that the evidence or knowledge based on it is itself scientific.

Fischer may be as unaware as you think, but might he not also just be exercising a healthy caution about achievable results?

Mike,

It could be a “Waste”, or it could be a very timely, once in a lifetime opportunity to “change the world”...

A next step is to make sure that Dr. John Fischer gets a copy of this Blog - perhaps he would accept it as one of his starting points (perhaps not)...

I suspect that this whole program is being directed by those in “higher realms”, so who knows what the next steps may be (just be ready to contribute when possible)- this goes for each of us ...

Do not let this opportunity get away!

Thanks/RBB

Indeed the wise scientists of recent years have not even stopped to consider the anthropological possibility that many of their views are heavily colored by the current culture and society. No one
to the best of my knowledge ever taken any interest at all in considering the possible evidentiality (proof of survival)to be found in the study of the cross-cultural phenomena similar to Spiritualism in the Western world. Those phenomena include shamanism, healing, trance control, and even physical phenomena. Physical phenomena, for example, were always dismissed w/o study as acts of ventriloquism and sleight-of-hand. The greatest amounts of phenomena associated with the traditional or syncretistic religions of earlier times have not yet been seriously considered for scientific study simply because of assumptions and biases of Western culture and methodolgies. Paul D. Biscop, Ph.D., Cultural Anthropologist (ret.)

I hope that you have sent a copy of this insightful article to John Fischer and the Templeton Foundation.

Having researched Spiritualism & life after death for more than 20 years….I think Mr.Fischer might first take the time to study the subject, especially all the notable names of the past, which Mr.Tymn has mentioned that ALREADY put the time and research in.  Survival of death & immortality have already been documented & proved.  The profundity of people’s ignorance on this subject-the truths of which are, in my opinion, the most important an individual could ever know and which are documented in literally hundreds & hundreds of books which, with a little determination can be found, remains a sad fact of this life.

Perhaps I should send Fischer a copy of my book The Thoughtful Guide to God and save the university $5 million. Of course, there’s much more to be said, but my book does exactly what Fischer says he is aiming to do - to combine science, theology and philosophy to provide a rational underpinning to afterlife existence! Interesting piece of news though Michael.

Absolutely Brilliant Mike! What a tragic waste.