Chris Carter: The Case for the Afterlife

In this episode, I sit down with Chris Carter, author of The Case for the Afterlife, to talk about what happens when we die and why the evidence for life beyond death is a lot stronger than mainstream science wants to admit.

Chris Carter is an Oxford-trained philosopher and is the author of four highly acclaimed books and several scholarly articles. His latest book is The Case for the Afterlife, which argues that the case for the afterlife can be proven beyond all reasonable doubt, entirely on the basis of evidence.




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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
You are listening to the NVS Alien Podcast with your host,
Heather Woodward, an award winning psygig, supernatural author and lover
of all things true crime. On this show, we're going
to deep dive into topics so don't usually see the
light of day, the spooky, the weird, the macabre, the paranormal,
and of course aliens. Sit back, grab a cup of tea,

(00:24):
and let's get on with the show.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Hey, everybody, welcome to the Envious Alien Podcast. Today we
have Chris Carter and we're going to be talking about
the book The Case for the Afterlife. Hey Chris, how
are you.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
I'm fine, Heather, how are you?

Speaker 2 (00:46):
I'm doing really good. So first tell us a little
bit about who you are and how you got into
this field.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
Okay, I guess it all started when I was a
student to overseas and it was in my first year
over there, and it was in England, and one evening,
a friend of mine who lived in the same graduate dormitory,
he is trying to convince me to spend our second
year living in a farmhouse which is owned by our college,

(01:15):
which lay on farmland just oside of town. And I
wasn't sure if I wanted to leave the dormitory was
much closer to town and college, but he was adamant,
and at one point he simply said to me the
place has a ghost. And I was taken aback by
his words, but I said, has anybody seen anything? And
he said no, but there's been a lot of strange

(01:36):
sounds reported. So I hiked over this farmhouse and decided
to see the place for myself, and it turned out
to be a two story stone house built in medieval times.
I stopped in to speak with the college carpenter. He
had his workshop on the property, and after a brief chat,
I just came straight out with it and I said,
they tell me the place is haunted, and he said

(01:57):
I don't know myself, but the carpenter before me, he
swore the place was haunted. So I decided to move
in spend the next year living in this allegedly haunted farmhouse.
To make a long story short, I did see and
hear some things which I could not readily explain, which
were contrary to the materialist opinions of some of the
philosophers I'd studied with. But I was open minded enough

(02:20):
to admit that perhaps these strange experiences were of just
what they seemed to be, that is, the lingering, disembodied
presence of someone who had lived in the house in
days long past. Nothing I saw was terribly dramatic or
terribly convincing, but it did spark my interest. When I
got back to my own country, I started reflecting on
my strange experiences in the old farmhouse. So I went

(02:44):
down to the local library and I was wondering if
I could find anything, any serious research that had been
done on the subject of hauntings and communication with the
departed other similar topics. I was surprised by the amount
of material that I found, and particularly impressive was the
other research conducted by the British and American Societies for

(03:05):
Psychical Research. These societies were both founded in the eighteen eighties.
The British Society was founded in eighteen eighty two, with
Henry Sidgwick, a philosopher at Cambridge, as his first president.
The American Society was founded two years later in eighteen
eighty four, with William James, a philosopher at Harvard University,
as its first president, and its membership included some of

(03:28):
the most influential scientists, philosophers, lawyers, physicians, politicians, clergymen on
both sides of the Atlantic. And despite the often repeated
lie that the British and American societies never found anything,
the truth of the matter is that they found an

(03:48):
awful lot and it was enough to convince almost all
of the members of the reality of the afterlife. By
the term in the twentieth century, another words, one hundred
and twenty five years ago, and this also included several
members who started off as diehard skeptics. Their stated intention,

(04:10):
they stated openly their desire was to discredit mediums and
expose them as frauds. After encounters with several mediums, their
in depth investigation of different mediums, they came to the
exact opposite conclusion. And you also have to remember that
the mediums that they studied, most of them were not
professional mediums. They were women of high social standing. One

(04:31):
of them was missus Verell. She was a professor at
Cambridge University. There was another one, Missus Coombe Tenant. She
was a Justice of the Peace and she was the
first woman appointed to represent Britain at the League of Nations,
which was the forerunner of the United Nations. Of several
of the other women were wives of politicians, wives of physicians,

(04:53):
and they did their mediumship. When their mediumship was recorded
in the various journals of the American British societies research,
it was under pseudonyms, in other words, anonymously. They did
not want their interest in mediumship revealed, did not receive
any sort of payment for their services. Was all done voluntarily.
So to somewhat all up, there's an enormous volume of

(05:16):
evidence for survival and to argue on the basis of
this evidence that the case has been proven beyond all
reasonable doubt.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
So we were talking a little bit before the interview,
and you said that your body of work is mostly
about skeptics and what the difference is between what skeptists
believe and what is actually out there. And you have four.

Speaker 3 (05:37):
Books, correct, that's right, this is the fourth. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
I was looking at your body of work. You have
an interesting take on things, and I just want to
know a little bit about how you got to be.
I don't know what the right word is, but you
really you're very granular with your information and your very much.
I went down this rabbit hole and this is what
I found, and it's without a doubt and I just

(06:04):
want to know.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
How to without without without reasonable doubt, not without conceivable doubt.
It's a huge distinction.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Yeah, yeah, But I want to know what got you
to that place. I know you said that you were
in this hunted place, but what in your mind made
you go, this is what I'm going to study, and
this is what I'm going to do.

Speaker 3 (06:21):
That was just the spark to set the fire. It was.
I was amazed by the amount of research, but I
was also aware of the famous saying by the physicist
Richard Feyman, you must not fool yourself, and you are
the easiest person to fool. In other words, his warning
was to try to avoid the confirmation bias, and that
is to seek out information that confirms what we already

(06:43):
believe or what we want to believe. And so I
was aware of this, and I decided to seek out
any dissenting opinions I could possibly find. And it wasn't
hard to find them. A little bit of searching, I
found a website devoted to debunking the belief Afterlife. I
was shocked by the sheer ignorance and the vehemence of

(07:07):
the author's opinions, and equally unimpressive were the quotes that
he supplied from other skeptics Susan Blackmore and Richard Wiseman
and others James Randy. They were completely I couldn't believe it.
I was shocked, and so I wrote to the author
of this website expressing my disagreements. He replied, and over

(07:28):
the next few weeks we engaged in online debate. That
was really the second spark, or the added fuel to
the fire, I should say, at that two three week
period I gained great insight into the skeptical way of thinking,
and I realized it was based upon several misconceptions, fundamental
misconceptions about things such as the relationship between the mind

(07:49):
and the body. It was also based upon sheer ignorance
of the best evidence, and in many cases it was
based upon little more than misrepresentation, slander, things that quite frankly,
I was just shocked by the whole mess. Decided that
a book was needed, and so my first book was written.
It was called It was originally titled Parapsychology and the Skeptics,

(08:14):
and it was essentially a history and a critique of
the skeptical movement and in particular their publication the Skeptical Inquirer,
the magazine of Reason and science they call it. It's
nothing of this sort. It's the magazine of prejudice and ignorance.
And I've taken these people on many times, both in

(08:34):
person and in print. There's also a book out there
titled Debating Psychic Experience, and I contributed two articles to it.
And in this book, essentially it's a debate between the
leading so called skeptics and myself and the parapsychologist Dean Rayden.
So I've got extensive experience dealing with these people. I

(08:55):
understand them.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
So what do you think At the core of it
is why do people want so veheminently to debunk sigh
your death experiences, mediumship?

Speaker 3 (09:08):
What's the driving force? Is the motivation? You have to
remember that most of these skeptics are militant atheists, and
one of the fundamental pillars of the atheist worldview is
the ancient doctrine of materialism. Now, this is the idea
that all events ultimately have a physical cause, and it

(09:30):
follows from this that the mind is produced by the
brain and cannot exist or operate in the absence of
a functioning brain. Now, any evidence to the contrary discredits
materialism and thus threatens the collapse of this entire worldview.
And I believe this more than anything else, explains their

(09:52):
opposition to the evidence that proves materialism false. Essentially, they
don't want to be held accountable for their lives. They
they hate religion, they hate the whole idea of an afterlife.
They don't want to be told how to live, so
they engage in this sort of scorched earth policy of
denying and dismissing and ignoring evidence proves their worldview is

(10:14):
ultimately false.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
It's so interesting that there's always a dogma behind it, though,
because as you're talking and I'm like, what if there
is an afterlife, it doesn't have to be a religious afterlife,
It doesn't even have to coincide with Christianity or any religion.
It always seems very a myopic to me that somebody,
even if they're an atheist, would think that if there
is no Christian afterlife, then there is no afterlife, because

(10:39):
isn't that kind of pigeonholing people into one way of thinking.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
The belief in the afterlife goes back, at least to
the Neanderthals who bird they're dead with the tools, utensils,
jewelry and whatnot, presumably for use in the afterlife. So
it long predates Christianity or any organized religion for that matter.
So you're right, two ideas are logically independent, but the
ideas are tied together in their minds. Again, these people,

(11:06):
they simply do not want to open the door at
all for any sort of spiritual or religious beliefs, and
to do so they quite falsely invoke the name of
science and reason and rationality. They're nothing of the sort.
There's one person. She was a Elizabeth Meyer, and she
started off as skeptics. It was a professors psychology. She

(11:27):
had an unusual experience, and she began reading the literature,
the favorable literature, and then she thought she'd read the
Skeptical Inquirer. She thought that would provide useful balance. It
did nothing of the sort. She described it as and
I quote these are her words, like reading a fundamental
religious tract. She said it was full of sarcasm and
self congratulation and insults people who disagreed with their opinions.

(11:52):
There's a very strong emotional undercurrent to the motivation of
these skeptics. They're not all the same they're mixed and
motley crew, but they tend to have that in calmon,
especially the most militant ones. Others are simply ignorant. They're
simply not aware of the evidence. But there's a difference
between genuine skepticism and what these people are doing, because

(12:13):
true skepticism is the practice of doubt. It's the suspension
of belief, it's not the refusal of belief. So these
people are not actually skeptics, they're actually deniers.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
I like how you put it that way from just
my own experience, as anybody who I have come across
who has been a skeptic, just a little bit of
in my background. I've been a permenal investigator for twenty
plus years. I work as a psychic for a living,
and I have studied sigh relentlessly because I've wanted to
know what's the scientific basis for what I can do,

(12:47):
because it doesn't make sense to me. And I found
that people who are skeptical, like you said, there is
no reasoning. It's that it has to be this way
and there's no other way. And it's usually very dystopian
kind of negative connotation as to what it is to
be alive. And I always wonder if this is more

(13:08):
about you and your trauma than it actually is about
being skeptical and usually I found that most of the
people have had experiences in their life that they have
chosen to deny, and I'm wondering if you have that
same experience.

Speaker 3 (13:20):
These people are, as I said, they're mixed and Motley crew,
but the Milton Ones. It's astonishing how often the same
arguments has come up again and again. One thing I've
heard before more than once is the ridiculous accusation. So
you just want to believe these things are true, I
simply reply, and I guess you don't want to believe
they're true. Perhaps you don't want to be held accountable

(13:41):
for your life. Anyway, instead of criticizing me as a person,
why don't you try criticizing my arguments? Or is that
just too hard? The fact that I do or do
not want to believe something is irrelevant. Just because a
man wants to believe his wife is faithful, it doesn't
mean is unfaithful. Ultimately, these are two separate issues, but

(14:04):
they don't see it that way.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
Makes sense, That makes a lot of sense. So I
was jumping around in your book because understanding my consciousness.
And one of the things that was really interesting to
me when I was reading it, and it's something that
has always fascinated me, is you were talking about how
most people and a lot of skeptics think, and they've
had to try they've tried to proven this that our
consciousness is in our brain or it's somehow in our body,

(14:30):
and the more that they study it, the more that
they have found that it's non local. And I wanted
to touch upon that, and what kinds of evidence have
you shown or have you researched about that particular subject.

Speaker 3 (14:43):
That's a great question that goes back to the mind,
the relationship between the mind and the body. Does the
brain produce the mind or is the brain the instrument
of our minds? I think that the evidence indicates the second,
that the brain is an instrument of the mind. I
think that the evidence indicates the brain works as a
two way receiver transmitter, sometimes from body to mind as

(15:06):
in sense perception, other times from mind to body as
in willed action. Now it's not even necessary to discuss
the paranormal evidence or offer paranormal evidence in support of this.
Mainstream medical evidence supports this idea. Sir John Eccles he
won the Nobel Prize and in Physiology, I believe for

(15:29):
his discovery of how the brain works. It communicates. Neurons
communicate by exchanging chemicals at the synaptic sites, the connection
between two different neurons by exchanging chemicals, which he called neurotransmitters.
He believed that the brain was the instrument of the mind.
He came to that conclusion as did Wilder Penfield, the
great Canadian brain surgeon who won the Nobel Prize in

(15:51):
Medicine for his work with epileptic patients. He also thought
that that was a relationship between the brain and mind.
Even though he started off as a materialist, he thought
that the brain was a sort of biological computer, that
the relationship between the mind and the brain was that
of programmer to computer. In other words, the mind programs

(16:12):
the brain which to do mundane routine tasks in order
to free itself up to do other things. We all
know this, We all have experienced this. Think about learning
to play a musical instrument, or learning how to drive
a car, or speak another language, or play a new sport.
At the beginning, it requires a lot of conscious effort,
just to do the basics. But once we've programmed our

(16:35):
brain to handle routine, mundane tasks, then it freeze ourselves up,
freeze our minds up to think about other things. So
we're playing a piece in the piano, we're not thinking
about which keys were pressing and which pedals were pressing.
We're raither thinking about how we would like the music
to sound, how fast do we want to play it,
what mood do we want to convey. Same thing with

(16:57):
driving a car, we've all had the experience going somewhere.
We normally don't go, perhaps to somebody wherever, and we're
thinking about something else, or we're engaged in conversation. We
find ourselves driving to work, or driving to school, or
driving to the grocery store. Why because we programmed our
brain to follow these at these paths. And I said,
we don't have to even bring in paranormal evidence. Mainstream

(17:20):
medical evidence I believe supports this. I discuss in my
book The Case for the Afterlife a well known medical
phenomenon called terminal lucidity. Now this is familiar to people
who work with dying patients and hospices, the physicians and
the nurses and so forth, and It refers to the

(17:40):
phenomenon which is remarkably common that patients who are suffering
from some sort of brain damage, whether it's Alzheimer's, dementia,
injury due to accident, or disease, during the last few days, hours,
minutes of their lives, suddenly regained their lucidity. There's one

(18:04):
case I discuss which a woman who's suffering from severe
Alzheimer's that had destroyed parts of her brain. She'd been
a little more than a babbling, demented person for several years,
and yet one day her nurse came into the room
and the woman was awake and lucid, and she wanted
to see her daughter. The nurse realized what was going on,

(18:25):
called her daughter and said, your mother wants to speak
with you. Intrigued, the daughter went down and found her
mother perfectly lucid for the first time in about ten years,
and the woman asked about relatives and current affairs and
what have you, and the daughter said it was like
talking to somebody who'd been asleep for ten years. Shortly
after she died. In cases like this have been reported,

(18:50):
the ancients talked about them. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, Cicero,
Galen and others. They wrote about these experiences, and they
all took the opinion that this was evidence that during
the last few moments of life, the soul or the
mind was disengaging from the restrictions of material brain. So

(19:10):
it's not even necessary to bring in a near death
experience or other interesting lines of evidence that I discuss in
my book. Even mainstream medical evidence suggests that the brain
is the instrument of the mind, not the producer.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
I always find that to be so fascinating, just because
I always wonder in slit experiments and the shrew Dinger's
cat and all that kind of goes into that which
is like, as the observer, how much of our reality
do we create and doesn't exist if we don't interpret
it as existing, or if we don't witness it or

(19:45):
observe it. And these lucid moments that you're talking about.
My stepmom was a nurse forever like thirty years, and
she said that she always knew someone was going to
die because there would be these moments of loosidness. And

(20:06):
she said that people nurses especially would tell their loved ones, hey,
just because they seem like they're getting better that's not
actually a sign of them getting better, that's actually just
under them going the opposite way. So prepare your stuff
because it's time. And it's such a fascinating phenomenon to
me that, like you said, we disconnect. It's like our

(20:28):
brain is letting go of our consciousness and it's like
pulling apart.

Speaker 3 (20:33):
You're right that people who work with the dying have
noticed for thousands of years that if they're suffering from
some sort of brain injury and they become lucid, it's
a sign that the end is approaching. There was let's
see here Michael Naum. He's a biologist in Germany. He
surveyed the European literature and found the following case reported

(20:54):
in nineteen twenty one. So fellow Nim Surya, his friend's
brother had been confers fine to what those days was
called a lunatic asylum for many years because of a
serious mental derangement. I'm just reading his serious quote here.
He says, one day, Suria's friend received a telegram from
the director of the asylum saying that his brother wont
to speak to him. Now, this is Suria writing he

(21:17):
at first himself in the third person, serious friend received
a telegram from the director of assiment saying his brother
want to speak with him. He immediately visited his brother
and was astonished to find him in a perfectly normal
mental state. On leaving again, the director of the asylum
decently informed in the visitor that his brother's mental clarity
is an almost certain sign of his approaching death. Indeed,

(21:40):
the patient died within a short time. Subsequently, an autopsy
of the brain was performed, to which Suria's friend was
allowed to attend. It revealed that the brain was entirely
superadd meaning filled with pus, and that this condition must
have been present for a long time. Suria asks, with

(22:00):
what then, did this brainsick person think intelligibly again during
the last days of his life. Yeah, and as I
mentioned before, Hippocrates, Plutarch, Cicero, Galen, and other scholars of
classical times noted the symptoms of mental disorder decrease as
death approaches. I'm reading the work of Michael Namir. He
says all of them held a view that the soul

(22:21):
remains basically intact when the brain is affected by physical
conditions and disturbance of the mind. Therefore, they believe that
during and after death, the soul was freed from material constraints,
regaining its full potential.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
It's astounding to me because it's like, where are we then?
If we're non local, where are we? And it seems
like we're in the spiritual context. You would say you're
part of universal consciousness? But then what is universal consciousness?
It's an abstract idea that we've.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
Come up with aspects to reality, though it's been noted
for thousands of years by just what anyone has thought
about it. The two aspects of reality, of course, the
physical in the psychical, and we have to remember that
the two are related. Of course they interact with each other,
and believe they interact. The intersection occurs within our physical brains.

(23:13):
But to ask where we are, I think that's asking
the wrong question because location is a physical concept, not
a psychical one. I don't think it really makes a
lot of sense to ask where our minds are located.
If there is any sort of space, it's certainly not
in a physical space.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
No, it would it be a physical space. Universal consciousness.
People think of it as like a river or a matrix.
It's just a river of ideas that we moved in
and out.

Speaker 3 (23:39):
I have to make them skeptical in the true sense
of being skeptical of the idea of universal consciousness. I
don't think that we're all part of one great mind,
or we all merge into one great mind, or anything
like that. It's not what I think the evidence indicates.
I do think that our minds are connected, So in
that sense, I believe there's a universal consciousness in the
sense that we're connected, but not in the sense that

(24:01):
we're all part of one whole. You mentioned something interesting
and caught my attention. I just wrote down a brief
note for myself. You briefly mentioned physics. Modern physics does
not imply or indicate or prove or anything like that,
that we survive the deaths of our bodies. It's compatible
with both. But you get philosophers such as Daniel Dennett
and so forth who will argue that. Oh. Dannett wrote

(24:23):
a book titled Consciousness Explained, and in this book he
simply denies consciousness even exists, presumably because of his inability
to explain it. But he thinks that dualism, the idea
that our minds are separate from our brain, is contradicted
by physics. He argues that any sort of physical action
requires an exchange of energy, that therefore a non physical

(24:46):
mind cannot influence a physical brain. This is ridiculous, This
has been it's contrary to quantum mechanics because there's something
called the collapse the state vector, which I don't want
to get into here, the collapse of the wave function rather,
which in which conscious decisions can influence reality at the
atomic and subatomic levels. So several physicists, including Henry Stapp

(25:07):
at Berkeley University and other people Fred Kutner, they've argued
that modern physics allows an escape fromism, from the supposed
flaw of dualism, and the dualism cannot be ruled out
in the basis of physics. But it's not even the base.
We don't even have to invoke quantum mechanics. So there
was a philosopher, he's both a physicist and a philosopher,
named C. D. Broad. He was a member of the

(25:30):
British Society Psychical Research, and in the early nineteen twenties,
I believe he argued that dualism cannot even be ruled
out on the basis of classical physics, that is, the
physics of Isaac Newton, and others James Clark Maxwell. He
argued that as a philosopher, just because all physical to

(25:52):
physical causation may require an exchange of energy, it doesn't
fall from this that physical to mental or mental to
physical causation also requires an exchange of energy. Dennett's argument
that dualism should be ruled out from the start on
the grounds that somehow conflicts with physics. It's simply ridiculous.

(26:13):
It's based upon nothing but ignorance and dogmatism.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
Yeah, I would say it's because you don't understand, it
doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Speaker 3 (26:20):
The history of science is filled with examples of scientists
behaving in this manner. Reports that rocks fell from the
sky were dismissed and ridiculed by the natural philosophers, which
is what scientists recalled in those days for decades. How
can rocks fall from the sky? They around their rocks
in the sky to fall, and so these reports were

(26:41):
ridiculed and dismissed. The idea of a continental drift it
was first proposed by a geologist named Wagner back in
the nineteen thirties. I think on the basis of geological evidence,
similarities in fossils and similarities in rocks and oil deposits
in the Arctic and so far, and he argued for
the reality of continental drift. His arguments were ridiculed by geologists.

(27:06):
Continents don't move around, They're not floating on the oceans.
How can they possibly move? And the idea that surgeons
had washed their hands before performing surgery or assisting in
childbirth was also mocked and ridiculed. There's an Austrial Austrian
physician named Hungarian physician named Semmelvis. Way back in the

(27:27):
eighteen hundreds. He was presenting statistics that he had gathered
that showed that in hospitals where physicians washed their hands
before surgery or helped assisting in childbirth had much lower
rates of death by infection. And he was trying to
get the physicians of his time to wash their hands
before surgery. Most of them laughed at him. They ridiculed

(27:51):
his beliefs. They said, my hands aren't dirty. I just
wiped them that rag ten minutes ago. There's no dirt
on them. And they refused to wash their hands because
it made no sense to them. This is before the
role of microbes and bacteria, the existence of microbes and
bacteria was even known. Because some of these couldn't explain

(28:12):
why couldn't explain why washing hands before surgery resulting in
meaningful reduction in deaths, they rejected that it was true.
But there's a distinction between knowing that something happens and
being able to explain how it happens, and the fallacy
of combining the two has led to tragic results. Thousands

(28:35):
of people died needlessly in hospitals before physicians began to
wash their hands. It was only after the existence of
microbes and bacteria and their role and disease was first noted.
Then it made sense, and then they started doing it.
So today meteorites, continental drifts, the importance of washing hands

(28:56):
before eating, or what have you. School children around the
world take these things for granted. Yet these things were dismissed,
ridiculed for decades by scientists and physicians.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
Yeah, it's funny how one man's conspiracy is another man's
scientific breakthrough. As time goes on. I want to talk
a lot about something that is dear and dear to
my heart, which is messages from the dead. And you
go a lot into this, and then you go into

(29:29):
characteristics of the dead and what has your research shown
about that.

Speaker 3 (29:36):
In this book, The Case with the Afterlife, I present
evidence from five independent lines of evidence. Deathbed visions, the
near death experience, reports of apparitions, children who claim to
remember a previous life, and yes, apparent messages from the departed.
These lines of evidence, all very different from each other,

(29:59):
all pointed in this direction, so they reinforce each other.
But I argue that the single most impressive and convincing
line of evidence would be messages that give every indication
in the best cases of being received from those who
have passed over. That was one of the primary research
goals of the British and American Society's psychical research. They

(30:21):
first started studying two types of mediums, physical mediums and
mental mediums. Now, physical mediums are the ones that claim
at least to produce physical phenomenon phenomena tables that float,
musical instruments that play without anyone playing them, appearances, things
like such as that. After a short period of time,

(30:41):
they exposed several physical mediums as fraudulent, and they abandoned
their study of physical mediums on the grounds that there
were too many fraudsters out there, and on the grounds
that it was too easy to explain it away as
being due to fraud or misperception, or exaggeration or mal observation,

(31:04):
and so they concentrated their studies on as mental mediums.
These are mediums who produce messages either through voice or
through writing on a piece of paper. They'll typically go
into a trance. Sometimes they'll convey the messages verbally, seemingly
from other times they'll write rapidly on the piece of paper,

(31:24):
and in the most dramatic cases, possession mediumship. The medium's
vocal cords and hands and so forth seems to be
taken over by the departed and they speak directly through
the medium. As I said earlier, most of the mediums
studied by the British and American societies were not professional mediums.
They were women of high social standing. I mentioned a

(31:46):
few of them. One was a lecture at Cambridge University,
another one was a justice of the piece. And they
did not want their activities publicized, and so they operated
under pseudonyms. The reports are written under sudonyms. So yeah,
I argue, that's single most impressive line of evidence.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
This is something they want to talk about little bit
when I do medium ship readings. I know I'm picking
up on something because I can feel the shift, right,
there's an energy shift that happens, and I've read a
lot of Dean Raiding stuff and the Ion stuff to
try to figure it out. I know I'm going somewhere
with it. I know I'm not reading the person per se,

(32:26):
but I'm not sure if I'm picking up on their
consciousness somewhere. I know i'm not picking up on the person. No,
I'm not reading the person, but I don't know if
I'm not reading their experiences outside of their body. Does
that make sense?

Speaker 3 (32:43):
Not sure what you mean.

Speaker 2 (32:44):
When I do like a tarot reading or do a
psychic reading, I'm reading off of the person. I'm reading
their energy. I'm just pulling from them so I can
access their experiences through that. When I'm doing medium ship readings,
I'm going somewhere else and I don't know where I'm going.
And that's something that's always confuse me. Am I reading

(33:07):
their consciousness somewhere else? Or am I actually reading the person?
Because even though I do mediumship readings, I'm not sure
about spirit communication. And even though I've done I don't
know thousands of investigations and allegedly haunted locations and have
had all these experiences. I'm not sure that there actually

(33:28):
is an afterlife, or that there are that actually people
come back. And I've never experienced anything that would give
me the indication that there isn't afterlife. And that's probably
why I read your book, because I'm still trying to
find the evidence that can definitively give me that strong

(33:52):
case for it. I know there's cases for it, I've
read them, but it's I guess my situation here is
I don't know what I'm tapping into something. I just
don't know.

Speaker 3 (34:01):
What it is. That's why the systematic and careful research
of the British and American society psychical research is so important.
I want to mention a case her out describing my
book in the chapter titled Evidence of Design and let's
see here, Let's see here, Okay, I'm just reading from
it if i'm me. On March seventh, nineteen hundred and six,

(34:21):
missus Verel's script contained an original poem which which started
with the words Tintagel and the sea that moaned in pain.
When Miss Johnson, She's General Secretary of the Side of
Psychical Research see gathered all these different messages from the
cross correspondences which her messages received from different mediums in
different parts of the world, in England, the United States,
and India, and said when miss Johnson read this, she

(34:44):
was struck by this its similarity to a poem by
Rodin Knowle titled Tintagel to the best of her recollection.
Missus Verel, she was electure at Cambridge, had never read
this poem. On March eleven, nineteen hundred and six. Missus
Holland's script contained these words. Now, Miss Holland was a
pseudonym for miss Woman I discussed earlier. These are the

(35:06):
word messrs came through. This is for a W. Ask
him what the date May twenty six, eighteen ninety four
meant to him, to me and to F W h M.
Frederick Myers, a deceased person allegedly communicating. I do not
think they will find it hard to recall, but if so,
let them ask Nora. Now the date given in the above,

(35:27):
which meant nothing to missus Holland, is the death of
Roden Knowle. The initials A W referred to Professor A. W.
Verrel and F W h M referred to of course
to F. W. H. Myers, both of whom knew Knowle,
but not very well. Nora means missus Sidgwick, which seems appropriate,
as Knowle's an intimate friend. Now here's where it really
gets interesting. On March fourteenth, before any of the above

(35:49):
facts were known to Missus Holland, she wrote in a
trance state eighteen fifteen four five fourteen fourteen fifteen five twelve,
not to be taken as they stand. C Revelations, Chapter thirteen,

(36:09):
verse eighteen, but only the central eight words, not the
whole passage. Now this whole thing was meaningless to Missus Holland.
Then she did not look up the passage, but miss Johnson,
the General Secretary of the spr who's receiving these dispatches,
did and found the central eight words were for it
is the number of a man. Taking this to be

(36:31):
a hint, she translated the numbers given in the script
into the letters of the alphabet, with D being the
fourth letter, E being the fifth, and so forth, and
when finished the letter spelled rodin No, so that's only
what's one small part of one of the cross corresponds's case.
This add message, by the way, was allegedly related or

(36:52):
re transmitted by the late Frederick Myers. He was one
of the founding fathers of the British Society's psychical research.
He had died in Italy in nineteen hundred and one.
That message came through in nineteen hundred and six. He
was one of the prime authors, along with a few others,
of the cross correspondences and which messages are received through
different mediums, but they're given in a very enigmatic and

(37:17):
enigmag manner. Their meaning is not obvious. They have to
be deciphered. So this one example of a puzzle which
took some work to decipher, which in the common theme
of the messages received through two different mediums two different
parts of England, was the name Rodent Knowle, the late poet.

Speaker 2 (37:34):
I can tell you just from experience, it never comes.
It always comes in symbols. It's me having to figure
out what is a symbol and what is a symbol
for the other person. If I see flowers, is it
actual flowers or is it for me to say, hey,
you never got your flowers, So here's the love and

(37:55):
respect that this person wants to give to you. It's
never literal, it's always an experiential thing where you have
to know yourself enough to know what to say and
what to keep to yourself and interpret. You've done a
massive amount of research from that. Where do you think
the information actually comes from? Do you really think it
comes from the deceased person or do you think that

(38:16):
it comes from the experiences of the living person both? Oh,
that's interesting, Okay, explain.

Speaker 3 (38:25):
The human medium is just that a medium, a method
of communication similar to a cell phone or what have you.
It's just not an electronic medium. It's a physical medium.
I arguement my fourth book that the case with the
afterlife has been proven beyond all reasonable doubt. Not beyond
all conceivable doubt, but beyond all reasonable doubt. And it's

(38:46):
confusion between the two standards of proof that allows skeptics
to claim that the case has not been proven. It
hasn't been proven beyond all conceivable doubt. That I grat
But that's a standard that is simply impossible to attain.
We're dealing with factual matters. I'll give you an example
what I mean by proof by proof beyond all conceivable doubt.
We've all seen this before. If A is greater than

(39:09):
B and B is greater than C, then A must
be greater than C. Now it is simply inconceivable to
us that C is greater than A, given that A
is greater than B and B is greater than C.
That's what we mean by proof beyond all conceivable doubt.
But the only reason we can attain this sort of
mathematical certainty is because A, B, and C are purely

(39:31):
abstract entities in a purely abstract argument. When we leave
the realm of pure logic and mathematics, we enter the
world of facts and evidence. We can never prove anything
beyond all conceivable doubt, only beyond all reasonable doubt. Now
what do I mean by that? I argue in my
book that a statement is proven beyond all reasonable doubt

(39:52):
when we have good reasons to believe it is true
and no good reason to believe that it may be false.
And when we're dealing with factual amount, all good reasons
are reasons based upon evidence, not upon speculation, not upon
could be this or maybe this, maybe that, Maybe the
police detective framed my client, who knows it could have happened. No,

(40:13):
unless there's evidence to believe that the police detectives framed
someone accused of murder, then there's no reason to take
it seriously anymore than we should take seriously the existence
of unicorns or what have you. So I argue in
my book that the case of the Affli has been
proven beyond all reasonable doubt, not beyond all conceivable doubt.
But you mentioned mediumship. Some of these cases are extremely impressive.

(40:35):
I wanted the most impressive cases. I mentioned a case
where there was a chess game played between a living
and a deceased grand master, and I give this case
began in the nineteen eighties when doctor Vulfgei and Eisenbeiss
wanted to initiate a chess match between living and deceased
grand masters. Now he contacted an amateur medium named Robert Rowlands,

(40:56):
who've always offered his services free of charge, and he
asked them to find a departed chess master who was
willing to play. And he came across and he found
someone named Victor Korchnoi came through. He was ranked third
in the world round the turn around nineteen hundred, and
he agreed to play. Robert Rowlins seemed to find a
deceased Hungarian chess master named Geza Maroxi who agreed to play.

(41:20):
He was ranked third in the world in nineteen hundred,
so about eighty five years previously who and he was
known for his remarkably strong endgame, And so the game
was played over several years with Robert Rowlands acting as
in intermediary. Now Roles did not know how to play chess,
yet to be taught that various pieces and so forth,
And at the twenty seventh move Korchnoi, the living chess

(41:40):
master ranked third in the world at that time, he
commented on the quality of his opponent's play, and this
is what he wrote. He wrote, during the opening phase,
Moroxy showed weakness. His play is old fashioned, but I
must confess on my last moves have not been too convincing.
I'm not sure I will win. He has compensated the

(42:01):
faults of the opening by a strong end game. In
the end game, the ability the player shows up, and
my opponent plays very well. Now, when he said that
the play was old fashioned, he was referring to the opening,
apparently coming from the deceased that departed the grand master
Gaze and Waddox. Moroxy used a very old fashioned opening
that was not taught anymore. Chess theory had made enormous

(42:24):
strides since nineteen hundred and so Moroxy opened with a
very old fashioned opening, but after that he played what
seemed to be perfect chess. That the game went on
to fifty two moves, in which the departed Moroxy conceded.
And let's see here, Bobby Fisher, he's considered one of
the greatest, of not the greatest chess player of all time.

(42:46):
He was shown the moves, a record of the moves
which I included in my book on page one thirty two,
and his brother in law, the physicist Russell Targ, sent
Bobby Fischer these the chess moves and asked him his opinion,
and Targ wrote, I sent the reported final chess score
to Bobby Fisher. Bobby wrote to me saying wrote back

(43:07):
to me saying, these are the words of Fisher. Anyone
can go fifty two moves with Victor Korchnoi's playing at
a grand master level. And after that. Remember, a large
part of my book focuses on critically examining the skeptical objections.
I go through every one of them. There's no reason
to believe that computer was used by Rollins to fake

(43:27):
the moves. In those days. It's back in the nineteen eighties.
Computer hardware and software were simply not advance enough to
give a grand master a challenging game, and it certainly
wouldn't be programmed to use an old fashioned opening, which
wasn't even taught in those days, taught anymore. And not
only that, but anyone who knows chess can look at
a chess score and tell whether the player was human

(43:49):
or computer. Computer. Chess is detectively inhuman. It does not
resemble the way human being played, and Moroxy, every indication
was he played very human type moves from the other side,
so it wasn't faked with a computer. There's another fellow
who claims claimed that it's all fraudulent, that Robert Rowlands

(44:12):
somehow was conspiring with a living chess grand master and
they worked together very closely in order to fake the scores. Now,
this was put forward by a fellow named Edwin may
As a physicist, and he said he basically raised the
logical possibility that maybe, perhaps for all we knew, for
all we know, Roland's secretly conspired with a living chess master.

(44:33):
It's absolutely utterly ridiculous. He didn't offer any shred of evidence.
He merely raised the logical possibility. In other words, he
raised conceivable doubt, not reasonable doubt. Here's my final conclusion,
after several pages of analyzing mays speculation, I wrote the
supposition that an elderly frequently ill man, that's the medium

(44:54):
Robert Rowlands, an elderly frequently ill man with an impeccable
reputation for honest, he secretly conspired with a living chess
master over seven years and eight months in order to
mimic the chess ability and style of a deceased grand
master and secretly travel to Hungary to carry out an

(45:14):
in depth investigation of Moroxy's life, all for no apparent
purpose or gain. And somehow did all of this without
arousing the slightest suspicion of any of the five other
persons directly involved. Can be safely rejected by all but
the most dogmatic skeptics.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
That's a lot of commitment for what That requires so
much planning, and I think that's part of the skeptical
brain doesn't realize that is the commitment to that for
seven years is that's ridiculous. Most people don't have that
kind of commitment to anything.

Speaker 3 (45:55):
These skeptical objections are they're ridiculous. The fact that they
have to resort to such far fetch ridiculous counter arguments
his testimony to the desperation of their position. Basically, they
follow the time on a tradition of defense attorneys, and
that's throw anything and everything you possibly can think of
against the wall and the desperate hope that something might
just stick.

Speaker 2 (46:14):
In your opinion, based on what you read and what
you've researched, where do you think he got the information from?
He was obviously channelling this person, but where was this person?

Speaker 3 (46:25):
I argue that the evidence is exactly what it seems
to be. Communication via Rolands from the departed chess master
gaves a moroxy.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
Right, and it wasn't just where his consciousness.

Speaker 3 (46:38):
Again, I don't think conscious is necessarily anywhere. I think
consciousness location is a physical term, not a second goal term.
So I don't I think the question is a little inappropriate.
It's like ask you how much does your mind weigh
this way anything, or how big is it? It doesn't
have physical dimensions. It's not a physical entity. It shouldn't
be described in physical terms. But much more than remarkable
chess playing skills were shown. Eisenbiss questioned Moroxy through Rolands

(47:03):
about the life of gaysa Moroxy, and Moroxy provided detail
after detail about his personal life, and these details were
so hard to verify that Eisenbis had to hire a
professional historian to travel to Hungary research Life gaysa Moroxy,
going through libraries and old chess journals and just speaking
to his living children. Rolands not only would have had

(47:25):
to conspire to living chess master, he also would have
had to travel to Hungary secretly on his own expense
to research life Moroxy to provide all this detailed information.
And the only remaining skeptical counter explanation is that of
super esp the idea that the mediums these mediums produce

(47:47):
or possess rather virtually omniscient powers of telepathy and clairvoyance,
that they can read the minds of living people, and
they can instantly scan documents in the world regardless of
what these people are thinking of out the time, regardless
of where these documents may be located, or it's absolutely ridiculous.
But when this doctrine of living agent ESP or super

(48:09):
esp as I refer to, it is put to the test,
which Eisenbeiss did. It's proven false. So living agent ESP
is an explanation in medianship has been proven false by
the data. And I'll give you an example. I mentioned
this in my book. I has to do with something
called the Vera Mentchik Club. The August fourth, nineteen eighty
eight edition of the Swiss Chess magazine. I don't know

(48:32):
how to say this. Shash Wash held a reader's competition
asking them who was the Austrian founder of the Vera
Menschik Club. Menshik was the first female world champion, and
the club's members were those whom she had beaten. In
other words, it was a joke. So Eisenbeiss asked Moroxy
through Robert Rowlands, the same question on August eighth, nineteen

(48:53):
eighty eight. This was four days after the readers of
the Swiss Chess magazine were asked that question. Yesked Moroxy
the same question on August eighth, nineteen eighty eight. Moroxy
confessed he was uncertain and speculated on various names. He
described the club as a silly joke to which he
paid no attention. On August eleventh, Moroxy considers Albert Becker

(49:16):
as a plausibility but the end rejects Becker. Note that
the super esp hypothesis would predict that the medium posing
as Moroxy would give the correct name, because by August fourth,
the entire editing team at the Swiss Chess magazine knew
the correct name. The solution was published in the same
magazine in August eighteenth eight, nineteen eighty eight. Albert Becker

(49:41):
on August twenty first, nineteen eighty eight, Moroxy's again asked
for the founder's name. Now this is three days after
was published in the magazine. However, this is what Eisenbeiss wrote.
He still does not name Becker as the founder of
the club, as might be expected under the super esp hypothesis.
Once the solution was published, it should be possible for

(50:03):
the medium to access the information either clairvoyantly or telepathically
from the minds of the magazine's readers. But instead of
correcting his wrong answer, Moroxy, quite unprompted, comes up with
a different story which evidently demanded his attention much more
than the silly joke. And this is what Eisenbeiss and Hassler,

(50:24):
his a colleague, concluded. They wrote, in our example, Moroxy's
Rachdale for forgetting the name of a man whom he
would have considered to be merely indulging in a pointless joke,
but then relating an unprompted story about a woman whose
beauty had impressed him as plausible. Whereas for Roland's the
medium is difficult to understand if using super esp, why

(50:45):
he should be unable to retrieve the name requested, given
his ability to convey detailed, precise information on other occasions,
even less why he should digress to an unprompted narrative thread.
Now think about that, if super esp were actually operating,
if the medium Robert Rowlands were using super esp to
telepathy and clairvoyantly access all this information, he should have

(51:06):
given the correct name of the very founder of the
Vera Men Check Club, Albert Becker, who was a contemporary
of Gays and Moroxy, should have been child's play because
he can He gave correct answers to much more difficult
questions than that, questions which were in which they again
they had to hire hungarian a historian to find the answer.

(51:30):
Never made a mistake. There's a couple of times where
the historian could not track down the answer to the question.
It was too difficult. But in there were two occasions
I believe where the correct answer made unknown, But every
other answer occasion, the answer given by apparently seemingly by
Moroxy through Rollins was correct. And yet when he asked

(51:50):
asks them this simple question about who was the founder
the Vera Men Check Club, which was a silly joke
which was made when when Moroxy was on this planet,
he can't get it. He just simply cannot retrieve it.
Instead he comes up with a different story. So, insofar
as living agent ESP, that's what it's called, it's testable,

(52:11):
it's been proven false, and I argue that it hasn't
been abandoned. It's just been turned into the ideology of
super ESP, which is ultimately untestable and offers nothing but
rais is nothing but conceivable doubt, not reasonable doubt.

Speaker 2 (52:25):
We're coming up on the hour mark. Is there anything
that you wanted to conclude with?

Speaker 3 (52:30):
I guess I'd just like to say that it's not
necessary for those of us who accept the reality of
the afterlife to hesitate or to take refuge in the
mysteries of faith, arguing modern revelation fully supports and it
supplements the words of the ancients, including scripture, now, the
evidence itself is vast. It's very and it's ancient, and
it fully supports the reality of the afterlife.

Speaker 2 (52:55):
Very cool. If people want to get a hold of you,
or they want to find you, or they want to
get a copy of your book, where do we go.

Speaker 3 (53:02):
The best place to start would be the website of
my publisher, Llewellyn. On that website, they'll find a description
of my book, they'll find endorsements from leading scholars in
the field, and they'll also find an essay, a short
essay that I wrote titled can We Prove the existence
of an Afterlife? And they can read that and see

(53:22):
what they think of my writing and the way I think.
There's also the book is available on Amazon, on good Reads,
and also in fine brick and mortar bookstores such as
Barnes and Noble, where I like to shop.

Speaker 2 (53:36):
I love Barnes and Noble too. Very cool. Thank you
so much for this interview. This has been a great
interview with The book is called The Case for the
Afterlife by Chris Carter. Thank you so much for this interview.

Speaker 3 (53:50):
My pleasure.

Speaker 2 (53:50):
Heather