Exploring the Afterlife with Elizabeth Entin

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
And as.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
To say.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whichever the case may be,
for all of you listening out there across the crazy
planet Earth, Welcome to Vestiges after Dark, and I am

(02:06):
your host, Bishop Brian will let coming to you lie
from the deep woods of western Georgia. On this May twentieth,
twenty twenty five. Tonight we talk about the afterlife, and
this is from a very different perspective. Our guest tonight,

(02:28):
a brand new guest, was an atheist, or maybe still is.
I'm not sure. We'll have to ask about that. And
she had some experiences that led her to do research
that became a book and then another book, and so
we're going to have a really good time talking about
this tonight. Of course, first though, questions from the ether,

(02:50):
so don't go anywhere. Hello everybody, once again, I'm your host,

(03:54):
Bishop Brian. We'll let here with my co host Jamie Wolf.

Speaker 4 (03:57):
Everybody, and uh.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
You know, we've had a crazy day, or at least
I have had a crazy day. So I'm happy to
be here now and hopefully I can get my mind
off of my crazy day by talking with all of
you and having some good conversation tonight. About the afterlife,
one of my favorite subjects. So this should be a
good show for you, I think, and hopefully will be

(04:20):
a good distraction for me. I was saying to Jamie earlier,
I love doing this show, I hate engineering it. So
if I ever say that I hate the show, it's
the engineering I'm talking about. I actually love the show.
If all I had to do was like show up
to the studio, get in front of the microphone and
then talk to all of you, I'd be in heaven.
It's having to engineer it at the same time that

(04:42):
I have to maintain my laser focus on what I'm
talking about, as well as having to just you know,
get myself off of the distractions of my day which
make it difficult. So bear with me because I am
not a broadcaster. I did not go to school to
become good at radio or podcasting or any of this stuff.

(05:04):
I you know, I'm basically a professional philosopher with a
with a career focus in psychology. So there you go.
And I ended up in the church somehow, well I
know how I ended up in the church. I ended
up in the church because I could never I could
never justify or or my my my position in psycho

(05:27):
in the in the in the world, in the field
of of of psychology as a as a as a practice.
Not to say that I, you know, have anything against
people that have made a lifestyle of that. It's just
I knew that for me, I was interested in healing people,
not maintaining them, and so for me, I went the

(05:50):
path to where that is most expeditiously found, and I
find that the only way to truly positively heal a
person emotionally psychologically is for them to get themselves right spiritually.
I'm convinced of that. You will never be able to

(06:11):
convince me otherwise because I've been on both sides of
that fence, and I don't think one is possible without
the other. So psychology was too limiting for me. That's
why I left it. And then I became a bishop.
So that's why if you ever wondered why why does
this bishop have a degree in psychology and you know
why is all his education into this?

Speaker 5 (06:29):
That's why. That's how it happened.

Speaker 3 (06:30):
And you know now you know, now you know joining
us from Australia, we have a father, Chris Yates tonight,
how are you doing, father?

Speaker 5 (06:39):
I'm Okay, we've had record rainfall here in New South Wales,
so I'm okay. I'm in a kind of a second
story apartment, so you're not gonna fly. If the water
reaches my windows, then.

Speaker 3 (06:55):
Then Australia is under the ocean.

Speaker 5 (06:57):
Right, Yeah, but what it has meant is there's travel
chaos everywhere. So I went to a lecture yesterday evening
by doctor Philip carry Atlas, who's brilliant, by the way,
and has a podcast, and he's an Orthodox theologian St.
Andrew's Theological College, and so I've been listening to him
for years and never met him, and so I met

(07:18):
him last night. That was great. But I was on
the light rail going into town and thought, why are
there so many people on this light rail lonely? It's
not that busy, And the reason was that, yeah, the
weather had brought down power lands and all sorts, so
it was pretty hectic. But yeah, other than that, I'm fine,
you know, and still kind of recovering from the recent
election because that was hard work. It took a lot

(07:40):
out of me. And I think I've kind of finally
accepted that I'm well and truly into middle age, and
I can't do what I did when I was twenty.
But don't tell anyone. It's our secret. Yeah, I feel you.

Speaker 3 (07:52):
I have to say I honestly, this is true, that
I'm being honest. I never really felt the strain of
my work, my job until fifty. When I when I
turn fifty, I think you're you're you're playing over there.

Speaker 5 (08:12):
I can hear.

Speaker 3 (08:13):
Myself times like like, I think that's me and that's
me over there.

Speaker 4 (08:20):
Pretty sure, but let me see.

Speaker 3 (08:23):
Okay, you got it. Okay, that's good. But no, I
until I turned fifty. That's when I really started to
feel like, Okay, I don't have any you know, I
wouldn't even say it was an energy thing or it
is an energy thing or a stanema thing.

Speaker 5 (08:39):
It's a.

Speaker 3 (08:41):
I mean this in the best possible it is it is,
but I mean this in the best possible way because
it's going to sound snarky. It's a Your tolerance for
bullshit decreases every month after you turn fifty.

Speaker 5 (08:56):
This is true. You just how you can just see how,
oh let's do this, and you can you already know
you're gonna have bullshit. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
In fact, I take vacations based on this now. It's
like there used to be times where I'll be like, oh,
let's do it, and we're gonna go have fun, and
then you know you've run into bullshit and you're like, boy,
that wasn't worth it. And now it's like, you know what,
I take vacations where I have to deal with the
fewest amount of people as possible, where I can be
alone as much as possible, and interact with this little

(09:31):
of the rest of the world as possible. That's why
I take vacations.

Speaker 4 (09:33):
You know what a great vacation is for me sitting
on the front porch, which with a bunch of feral
cats with a cigar and two fingers of bourbon and
some eighties heavy metal plane in the background.

Speaker 5 (09:47):
Well, there you go.

Speaker 4 (09:48):
That is the best.

Speaker 5 (09:49):
I mean, I think cynicism is just the synthesis experience.

Speaker 3 (09:54):
I think it is.

Speaker 5 (09:54):
It does.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
I mean, because it's like you start out life when
you're in your twenties and thirties, and I remember this
quite well in your teens too, nothing but you know,
almost almost hopeless optimism. I mean you're just you just
think that you can take on the world. You think
that you know all of the ideals that You've been
taught all your life condition to believe were attainable, and

(10:18):
so you go through your early years just basically getting
knocked on your ass constantly as you try to achieve
things that nobody actually you know, took your side and said,
you know what, you're on a feudal path here because nobody.

Speaker 5 (10:33):
Would them anyway. Well, I'm part of the trade off,
like we actually want young people to be more risk taking.
Like if everyone was sort of you know, at nineteen
twenty years old as cynical as I was, as you
said at twenty five, a copper byte for five years
by then, that mock every bit of excitement out of you.
And I think, you know, we actually need people to

(10:55):
be a bit more idea. I look back, you're in
the police and I both cringe. Also, I think, but
actually you need, you do need like that that difference.

Speaker 3 (11:03):
You know, you're not wrong, You're not You're not wrong,
particularly when you said I wouldn't listen anyway, because I
remember when I was in and I was I was
in the older end, like I was in my late twenties.
I was you know, I took four years off between
high school and in university. I and and and just
to travel and and and and get away from everything

(11:25):
because I was in the midst of my own personal
spiritual crisis which led me to the things I do now.
A lot of a lot of that happened in those
four years. So college would not have been a good
thing for me to do immediately after a high school.
So I took four years off and then I came
back to college four years later, which is why I

(11:47):
was much older when I was graduating undergrad and uh,
when I uh, when I was in undergrad, I remember
very clearly this professor in the School of oh gosh,
it was it was it was, I believe he was
I don't know the Language Arts. I forget which department

(12:10):
he was actually the dean of, but he was the
professor for one of the electives I I took, which
was in in the language arts, and uh, you know,
so he didn't know me because I was in the
School of Psychology and that was where you know, I
spent most of my time. But you know, every now
and then I would take an elective. You were required

(12:30):
to take so many electives to get the credit hours,
and so I didn't want to take more psychology because
I was actually getting a little burnt out on it.
So I anytime I could take something that was interesting,
like oil painting or poetry or whatever else, I would
take that just to kind of have have a mix
it up, you know, have a have a little respite
through the week where I didn't have to focus on

(12:52):
psychology so much or my career path. So I would.
He didn't know me from squat, and you know, I
took his class and I got very close to him
through the course of that semester, and uh and earlier
on in the semester, maybe after we started talking, he
asked me, he says, so, so, what what do you
you know?

Speaker 5 (13:08):
What are you majoring in?

Speaker 3 (13:10):
And I said psychology and he and immediately like, I
don't even think I got the why out of psychology
when he said get out and I said, what he says,
get out now?

Speaker 5 (13:24):
I said, what do you mean?

Speaker 3 (13:25):
He goes, Mark my words, if you get that degree,
it is going to destroy your life. Get out now.
And I was shocked by this because all my conversations
with him were he was really kind of a funny
kind of guy and very very a lot of of
I don't know how to put it. He was just
he was jovial, so this was very out of character

(13:49):
for him. He was not joking. I thought he was
joking at first, because he would sometimes have a dry humor,
but he came back with it and and I did
not believe him. I did not believe him. I said, Oh,
come on, I'm not gonna look give up. Yeah, I'm
not going to give up my my, my pursuit of this.
You know, you know, this is this is exactly the

(14:10):
kind of career that I that I want. This is
where my interest is, this is what I excel in.
So why would I listen to this? But you know,
it took me years to figure out that not only
was he correct, because it did.

Speaker 5 (14:25):
I mean, it did? It did?

Speaker 3 (14:26):
I mean I Fortunately I was able to save my
life in a different way, but it took a lot
longer than normally would have. And a lot of that
that I went through was about hopeless optimism that I
wanted to help and save the world and that's just
not possible, and I wanted it was like I didn't
care about money. Everybody in my family cared about money.

(14:50):
Everything was about money. Every one in my every particularly
every family member.

Speaker 6 (14:53):
I have.

Speaker 3 (14:55):
Our you know, materialists to the further extent, and not
not religiously economically, I mean they are just materialism is
a disease in my family. So to you know, it
was just not something that interests me. I had been
around that, been there, done that, see what it does
to people, and I said, you know, I don't want this,

(15:18):
and so I really didn't think for a moment that
that psychology would be a bad choice. But it turned
out to be a chain reaction of of that was
just horrible as far as what I would end up
having to do and see and deal with and realize
that once you long story short, you know, working in

(15:44):
government lockdown facilities where nobody's treating anybody. They're just pumping
schizophrenics who got arrested on the street full of Haldall
and watching them these young people develop tardai of dyskinesia
and these horrible illnesses as a result of these horrible
psychotropic medications. It was, it was it was a breaking

(16:08):
point for me that I said, there's got to be
a better way.

Speaker 5 (16:11):
Now.

Speaker 3 (16:12):
I guess God had a plan, because it was it
was that which sort of directed me back towards the church,
you know, because I had fallen away from the church
by this point. Remember one of the things I was
pursuing in that four years was monasteries and and and
seminary and and uh. You know, I was applying to
become a priest. So I wasn't exactly just doing nothing

(16:35):
for those four years between high school and college. But
you know, by the time I got into college, I
thought I had figured myself out. And I was so wrong.
And uh, and and and that that professor knew, he knew,
and he was right. And I'm not saying that psychology is,
you know, going to ruin everybody's life. I think he
knew me well enough to say it would ruin your life,

(16:57):
you know. And and it and it did, it did,
and it damn near close to destroying it to the
point that it would have been irrevocable if I would
have continued down that path. Thankfully, the church became a
way of being able to do what I intended to do,
perhaps not the way I hoped to have done it,
but it it got me out of at least the devastation.

(17:19):
One of these days I'll go into more stories about
all that. I've never really talked too much about that,
but right now, we've got questions from the Ether with
Brandon milem all the way over there in Tennessee under
threat of tornado. So how you doing tonight, Brandon?

Speaker 7 (17:35):
Right aware?

Speaker 8 (17:36):
Kids, I think at this point it's broken up for
the most part. They lowered it down to a severe
thunderstorm watch. So we're about to find out.

Speaker 3 (17:46):
Yeah, well we'll find out, right, Yeah. I think you'll
make it. I think you'll make it.

Speaker 5 (17:50):
Must say.

Speaker 8 (17:50):
If I get disconnected, then yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:52):
Well, well we'll be on the lookouts, and that could
also happen here. There is storms coming in, but I
don't think it's gonna be till after eleven. So on
the way home for me, yeah, you're gonna have a
good drive. You might have to might.

Speaker 4 (18:06):
Some eighties heavy metal on the way home.

Speaker 3 (18:08):
You'll have to float home. Yeah, all right, So let's
get to questions from the ether tonight. What's our first one?

Speaker 8 (18:14):
Okay, So the first one is I'm confused on something.
In Genesis sixteen, so because Sarah is barren, she tells
Abraham to have relations with her slave Hagar, so that
perhaps I will obtain children through her. And so Abraham
does that, and Hagar becomes pregnant. But when Sarah finds out,

(18:34):
she becomes furious and she treated her slave harshly and
the slave fled from her. So is there something else
going on here? Because Abraham did exactly as Sarah requested
and she gets angry and beats her now pregnant slave.

Speaker 5 (18:47):
Well, see, this is one of those beautiful but he's
he's called Abram at this point. Is not Abra Abram?
This is this is what is important.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
This is one of the beautiful things about script I
think is that it speaks to human nature in its
most raw and basic form, and it shows that even
though you can tell a story that's three thousand years
old like this, if not older, that it still very
much applies and that nothing has really terribly changed for us.

(19:19):
This is basically just a prime example of human jealousy,
and you know, it's it's it's actually a very honest
and natural reaction.

Speaker 4 (19:29):
This is another version of honey, what's wrong?

Speaker 3 (19:32):
I'm fine, Yeah, fine, you could say that. Essentially, what
it's teaching us, okay, is that people continuously and forever,
and that's a large part of the themes of the
Old Testament, is that people will always try to circumvent
the will of God because they're horribly impatient and they

(19:55):
want they think they know better, They want things now,
and they think that they know.

Speaker 5 (20:00):
Better than God does.

Speaker 3 (20:01):
And so what happens is in the stories of the
Old Testament, God lets them make those mistakes and then
they come running back, and then they make new promises,
and they make the mistakes again and He lets them
and this goes on and on and on until people
wake up, you know. And that's essentially to perhaps teach
us that we needed Christ, that there'd be no way
out of this. It'd be a forever cycle of just

(20:23):
constantly destroying ourselves instead where without having some kind of
help to be able to get out of that vicious cycle,
that we'd never get out of it. And we wouldn't
without Christ, we couldn't get out of it. That's the point.
So this is just a story about human nature and
you know, when we think we know better and we

(20:44):
make mistakes and God lets us, and then all hell
breaks loose and God says, okay, now what are.

Speaker 5 (20:50):
You going to do about it? And yeah, it's also
a motif about faith. I mean, if you look at them,
so there's a similar sort of pattern in Moses. So
Moses is instructed by God to strike, to strike the
rock and water will come forth. But then later on
in his life he just strikes the rock and water

(21:12):
comes forth without asking for God's blessing. And so, in
other words, he's taken. He's taken the will of God
upon himself, which is an act of pride, and and
and so and and really it's the suggestion or the
regional reason that's dangerous is because the Israelites could put

(21:32):
their faith in Moses instead of their their faith in God.
Here you've got with with with Abram and Sarah that
you know they've been He's been promised these descendants as
as numerous as the as the sand on the on
the shore. But they're getting old and it's not happening,
and so they they're they're sort of discerning between themselves.

(21:54):
I will, maybe this is how we have to do it.
But actually it's about they're forcing God's hand that they're
they're telling they're presupposing that God's not smart enough to
know what he's doing, and so they're gonna go their
own way. And this story tells you what a disaster
that is on a personal level. But but but probably
more important than the reason that the story survived on

(22:16):
on a on a faith level. If God says He's
going to accomplish something in you, he will despite you,
and by the way, he still does, you know, I mean,
and this is what this is why it's it's ultimately
good news in the scriptures, because Abram isn't isn't therefore
you know, smited and zapped as though he was a
citizen of Sodom of Goodmorrow. There is a there is

(22:39):
a redemption and a restoration of Abram. He still he
still fulfills God's will and becomes the father of the
Abrahemic religions.

Speaker 3 (22:50):
Yeah, yeah, so there you go. It's a human nature.
It's a story about pride and jealousy and all that
good stuff.

Speaker 5 (22:59):
All right.

Speaker 8 (23:00):
So our second question is why is gnosticism considered a
heresy by the Catholic Church?

Speaker 3 (23:07):
Okay, well, I mean, there's a lot of theological problems
with gnosticism. Perhaps the most important one in the primary
reason why it's not accepted as any kind of valid
theology is because it focuses on the idea that the
God of the Hebrews is not the real God, and

(23:29):
orthodox Christianity. It rejects that entirely that we as Christians,
except that the Father that Jesus Christ is referring to
when he says his Father, our Father, who are in heaven,
is the God of the Hebrews. So to have a
theology that says, no, this is not the real God

(23:50):
and Jesus actually is talking about a God that's above
this God, and that this is a false God that
the Hebrews have been worshiping all this time is very,
very problematic from a from a Christian vantage point, problematic
from a Jewish vantage point. So Narscissism is largely rejected

(24:10):
on that. Now there's other little tiny things that get
crept in there, like for example, we've talked about it
before on this show. For example, narcissism believes that the
body is a prison for the soul and that that
you shouldn't reproduce the complete opposite of what the God
of the Hebrews commands, because he wants to keep imprisoning

(24:32):
souls by saying be fruitful and multiply in this In
this context, they're saying no, we we We're going to
reject this by seeing the body and all physicality as evil,
because it's all been created by this evil, false God
that has tricked and duped the Jewish people into believing

(24:53):
that he's the real one. In fact, in most Gnostic theologies,
the this this evil God, it's called the Demiurge or
yald both. Yeah, thank you, I couldn't get it out
yal of both. This demi Urge actually doesn't even know
he's not the real God. He actually is. He convinced

(25:16):
himself that he's the real God. And so this is
inconsistent and incompatible with the teaching of Christ. And so
one would have to make a decision to believe that
either the Gospels are true, in which case you have
to accept that the Hebrew God is the real God,
is the Father of Jesus Christ, or you can go

(25:39):
the route of saying that now the gospel writers are
all duped too, and they get it all wrong, and
Jesus is really much higher than that and much more
important than that, and he's emanating from this higher, unknowable principle.
So they call a gnoscissism the true God the unknowable Father,
which is essentially how we do look largely at the
Father in the whole trinity concept. And let's be clear

(26:02):
about this, the Holy Trinity is a little bit of
narcissism too, a little bit. Not everything in narcissism was
completely outright rejected. The idea of even in the nissin Creed,
you know, the argument of the filliloquy, the idea that,
you know, does the Holy Spirit perceived from the Father
and the Son or just the Father. This is emanation

(26:23):
theology that is largely Gnostic. So it's not as though.
And the big one, I think, the big one, the
Gnostic influence on Christian thought is basically puritanicalism, the idea
that sex is dirty, and you know, Jewish people never
took that vantage void. Sex was sex was always considered
to be one of the most natural, beautiful, wonderful things

(26:45):
that God gifted us with. So the idea that sexual
thoughts and and and sexual appetite libido.

Speaker 5 (26:52):
Is is to be.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
Almost ashamed of this, and nudity, to be ashamed of
all this stuff is largely Gnostic concepts that got crept
in there. So in some ways we didn't completely eradicate it.
We adopted some of the parts of it that we liked,
but largely as a system it's too problematic to accept

(27:16):
as something that could be integrated. It's too contrary to
the gospels.

Speaker 5 (27:23):
Father. Do you have anything you'd like to add to that? Yeah,
I mean the life, death and resurrection. Often the resurrection
is ignored in certain Christian circles that you know, lots
of focus on the cross forgiveness of sins. Yep, what
about why the resurrection then? If it's all about our
sins being forgiven on the cross, why the resurrection? The life,

(27:46):
death and resurrection of our Lord and God and saving
Jesus Christ is the is the ultimate sort of It
blows apart both the idea of merely the uncreated God
being distant and watching us like ants through a magnifying glass.
It blows that apart because we believe that God took

(28:08):
on a human nature. But it also blows apart the
gnostic idea that the material world is only evil and
twisted and you know something, we've got to escape to
the next dimension from because in Jesus both God and
both God and man. This is why, of course, it

(28:28):
has to be ultimately rejected by the councils of the Church.
Along with arianism and celebrating the anniversary of the Nicene
creed it's seventeen hundred years since the Council of Nicea.
And this is rejected because in fact, the life, death,
and resurrection of Jesus Christ affirms or restores the fundamental

(28:51):
goodness of the material world. So it tells us not
something to be escape, but something that our lives can
be transformed by, and that in a sense, we begin
to live the heavenly life. From bat well, we would
now say from baptism, but following the encounter with Jesus

(29:11):
Christ and his resurrection, the resurrection of the body bearing
its wounds is the is the sign that the material
world is not something that's to be escaped from, but
in fact part of God's plan for humanity for all eternity.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
So Gnostics had a very ethereal worldview. They saw all
the physicality as evil and to be eradicated, not to
be an entrance, eradicated and transcended, not to be made
perfect and integrated. They did not see that the same way.

(29:48):
So resurrection to the Valentinian Gnostics. For example, Valentinian Nastics
were Christian Gnostics. They accepted Christ, but they believed that
the resurrection was a spiritual reality, not a physical one.

Speaker 5 (30:03):
Yeah. Yeah, because because it because it offends a Gnostic worldview.
So in a sense, you know, the christ event blows
apart every pre existing worldview. It blows apart the Roman
worldview of these multiple gods and and that you know,
Caesar is the incarnation of God on earth. It blows

(30:24):
away that the Greek worldview where you have a sort
of Apollo figure who's sort of half God half man,
which is why Arianism was so tempting for people who'd
been exposed to that. It blows apart of the Gnostic worldview,
it blows apart the Hebrew worldview. And so there's a
reason that we set our calendars to that event. It

(30:49):
really did. It was. It was a revolution in all
known philosophy and theology. It's why it's one of the
many reasons I believe it to be absolutely true.

Speaker 3 (30:59):
Yeah, with you and that completely So, yeah, I mean,
narcissism just wouldn't. I mean, while we did, as I've indicated,
adopt many things from Gnostic theology, there was far too
much of it that was in error to be able
to accept and say, you know that this is something

(31:21):
that can be part of the Christian worldview going forward.

Speaker 5 (31:25):
That's why I'm with you on the Puritans, by the way,
I mean, you know, they were deeply concerned about superstition,
and yet became the most superstitious group of Christians you
could imagine about their own nature. I mean it's I mean,
do you know what we should be frightening of ourselves
to a degree? Yeah, but the idea is not Therefore

(31:48):
try and sort of silo yourself or I don't think
there's any spiritual grace in simply hiding in a box.
You know, far more grace in in confronting wells as
the as the Baptismal liturgy says, you know, the world, sin,

(32:09):
the world, and the devil. Confronting that in the light
of Christ is in fact that that's the that's the
that's the baptismal priesthood that we all take part in,
and and and it really eschews the idea that we
should just hide from the world. And that's not what
munks and nuns are doing. By the way, I mean,
choosing choosing a religious life is is is a deliberate choice,

(32:33):
But the whole church can't choose a religious life. That's
what it has to be discerned for each group of people.
And we do need prayer warriors that in a sense,
you know, retreat and pray for the whole the whole church.
But but they're not that's that's that's not a gnostic response.
They're just becoming the engine room for other people who

(32:54):
they value and no need to go out into the world.

Speaker 3 (32:57):
Absolutely, And that's why religious life, even priesthood itself, is
a calling. It's a vocation called by God. It's not
a choice you make. Your choice is to respond to it.
Either you accept it or you reject it. But it's
not like a career where you're like, you know what,
I think being a priest would be a good job
to have. I'm going to go and do that. No,

(33:21):
isn't that the truth? Now you get called into it
and you either decide to you know, it's like it's
like mission impossible, your mission should you choose to accept it,
and it self destructs right in your face every time.
I mean, let me tell you, it's the truth, Yes
it is, it is. So that's the main reason. Now,

(33:42):
another thing that was part I remember this. This was
I think Rachel's question if I recall, and she had
asked a follow up to it, which I thought was
worth also mentioning here, so I actually kept part of
that question. She also was talking about why or being
bothered if I recall, I mean, she can correct me.

(34:03):
I think she's in the audience. She can correct me
if I'm wrong on this, but being bothered by the
fact that a lot of the Nagamadi texts were not
considered canon. And this is somewhat related to Gnosticism, because
you know, the Nagamati is largely a collection of Gnostic texts,
and so I'm going to just speak to that as

(34:24):
to why this was not considered You know a lot
of people now you'll hear people I need to add
this before I give the actual answer. A lot of
people will say that the reason that the Gnostic texts
were rejected was because the Church was threatened by them
and they had the real truth and they didn't want
anyone to know it because they wanted to control people,

(34:46):
and that the proto Orthodoxy. Yeah it is. It is
the Dan Brown theory. Yeah, it's good drama, it's good storytelling. Yeah, yeah,
it's good storytelling, but it's not good history. And so
the real reason is is that the Gnostic texts were
so far removed from the source material that not only

(35:09):
had they deviated from the spirit of the original text,
but they weren't really reliable contexts anymore because they were
not really connected in any way to the Apostolic source material.
So think about it this way. The canonical Gospels, all right,
were written between fifty five and ninety five AD. Okay,
give or take a few years. You have Paul's Epistles

(35:31):
that were written around fifty to fifty five.

Speaker 5 (35:33):
Somewhere in there.

Speaker 3 (35:35):
The Gnostic texts were between one hundred and four hundred
and fifty AD. You're talking in most cases hundreds of years,
with most of them being written two hundred and fifty
eighty or later. I mean, when you consider that what's
considered canon is all under one hundred and then almost
everything that's in the Nagamati is two fifty or older,

(35:57):
you can see why where think of to think of
one hundred and fifty years, Think of how much time
that is. I mean, one hundred and fifty years ago.
What year was that I'd have to do the math?
I'm all tired tonight, but I mean, you know, you
think about what life was like one hundred and fifty
years ago. You know, you're you're talking a completely different civilization.

(36:20):
So a lot of time passes, even in the ancient
world between those two things, and that's just not good materials.
So not only did it have deviant theology, and a
lot of it was deviant because it was so far
removed and people ran with their own theories and everything else.
But it wasn't ever considered serious scripture to begin with,
because by the.

Speaker 5 (36:37):
Time I'm just gonna say, I mean, if you want
proof and just read it, and the church is so
concerned about hiding and covering it up that you can
buy it on Amazons the house. It's interesting, it's interesting experience.
But you read it and you go, I can see
why this didn't make it into the candid It's just
it's not the same quality.

Speaker 3 (36:59):
Well, it's the laughing geesez that gets me. It's like
the one my favorite. I think it was the Gospel
according to Peter, if I if I'm not mistaken, and uh,
but the laughing Christ was laughing Christ. Christ, He's he's
on the He's well, there is I think a laughing Cross.
I think I could be wrong if it was Peter

(37:19):
or not i'd have to go. It's been a while
since I've read them, but there was one of them,
and uh in christis being crucified and everyone's looking around
and thinking this is just terrible. They're they're crying, they're wailing,
you know, everything that is canonical is happening. And then
behind the apostles is this guy laughing hysterically and they're like,

(37:40):
what the hell why you laughing? Turn they turn around.
It's Jesus and he's laughing because it's like they think
they think they can kill me, you know. And what
it was was, basically, I think it was a doctism
type of u theology and and that you know, basically,
you know, he kind of sets so enough self to

(38:00):
be crucified, so he didn't have to because he couldn't
couldn't be, you know. And this completely undermines the entire
point of Christianity. When you when you have Jesus faking
his own death, you can't you can't really have Christianity anymore.
So that's why these things are not accepted. It's not

(38:22):
because the Church didn't want to accept them.

Speaker 8 (38:24):
I just brought up something that I just thought of.
If in that text where Jesus had someone on the
cross and he wasn't. Has that influenced somehow Islamic thought,
oh yeah, oh yeah, Jesus wasted.

Speaker 3 (38:40):
Because think about it, Islam came about five hundred AD,
so about five hundred years after somewhere in there. It
couldn't give you the exact day, but it was around
the five hundreds and probably the later part of it
if I recall correctly, and and you know, they are
almost certainly going to be influenced by what was making

(39:01):
its way out to the east at that would have
been a lot of Gnostic material. Absolutely, I've always argued
that that Islam really was spawned from a from a
deviant sect sect of Ebionites. I really would. I think
if you, if you were really seriously try to trace,
if you could go in and really get into the archaeology,

(39:25):
I bet you you could easily prove if you had
the right you know, if you could make the right connections,
if you spent enough time, that that Islam came from
Abi Andite sex that had been influenced by Gnosticism. Absolutely, so,
I think that's probably where the foundation came from. Which
and if you don't know Islam's position on Christianity is

(39:46):
that the apostles got it wrong, that they were either
misled or they were trying to mislead us. Paul was
you know, was full of it, and that you know,
this is not what you know, what really happened. And
and they see Jesus as a prophet, not God. They
actually find that blasphemous to even argue that God would

(40:09):
incarnate humanity. But this is very gnostic. There's a lot
of Gnostic texts that say similar things, as you pointed
out Brandon good observation there by the way, So yeah,
I would. I mean, look, I'm not an historian. I
don't study biblical history or I'm not a history I'm
not an expert on Islam, but I know enough about

(40:31):
it to say, I bet you there's some connections there.
I mean, I think absolutely, you're right. We'd have to
get an expert on Islam to to to maybe give
us more insight, but they probably wouldn't want to admit that,
So we might have to go with just someone who
who's not a practicing member but studies it. That's who
you need to talk to, because when you get people

(40:51):
that are believers, then they're never going to tell you
the truth. It's the same thing in Christianity. I'm not
saying that that's an islam problem. That's a that's a
that's a religion problem.

Speaker 5 (41:03):
It's biased. It is, it is, it is.

Speaker 3 (41:05):
It's like trying to ask a Christian to prove that
Jesus didn't exist. I mean, there's no incentive for them
to do that, so you're probably not gonna get an
honest answer, you know. And why would they want one, right,
why would they want one? So it's understandable, it is understandable.
But yeah, get yourself a Nagamadi father Christ has put
the the link in the chat, you know. It's I

(41:27):
think it's a it's a good thing to have. There's
some beautiful texts in there. Some of them are of
good quality, not all of them, most of them are not.

Speaker 5 (41:35):
And part of.

Speaker 3 (41:35):
The yeah yeah hemeis yeah. And this is not Nagamadi,
but another text that may or may not be gnostic.
We're not entirely sure. Some scholars say yes, most say yes,
some say no. The Gospel of Thomas that is not
a Nagamadi text, as I recall, but it is mostly

(41:57):
believed to be gnostic or even pro a gnostic in
some form. Some think it is related to the Missing
q Gospel. It's possible, but there's a lot of things
that Jesus says in there that are in the gospels,
the canonical ones, and then there's some things in there
that are very gnostic sounding. And thank you bb uh
or bybe Lasers, thank you. I appreciate your support. Yeah,

(42:21):
we have a new pope. Yes, is that interesting?

Speaker 5 (42:24):
Leo?

Speaker 3 (42:25):
So far, so good? Right, nobody hates him yet, to.

Speaker 5 (42:29):
Give it time.

Speaker 8 (42:33):
Don't worry. They're already making conspiracies about.

Speaker 3 (42:35):
Him, are they really?

Speaker 5 (42:36):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (42:36):
Oh well there he's your He's from your neck of
the woods, so you'll have to.

Speaker 4 (42:39):
Deal with from anywhere near Chicago. Well west of Chicago.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
I'm from a small town.

Speaker 4 (42:48):
West of Peoria. Y. Yeah, I mean Chicago A good
place to think.

Speaker 8 (42:53):
They're making conspiracies about him before he even became pope,
because there's like this uh prophecy of the pope that's been.

Speaker 3 (43:02):
Around Malachi St. Malachi prophecies All Okay, that's because it's
largely been debunked. It's been disproved, but basically it gives
a list of popes until the church ends.

Speaker 5 (43:18):
Peter the Roman.

Speaker 3 (43:20):
Well, Malachi calls Peter Peter the Roman, and so you know,
we haven't really had anybody that really matches that, but
they always try to make it fit, you know, because
it's what people do. You know, when when when a
when a prophecy doesn't happen the way they wanted to,
they start to figure out ways to explain that. But no,

(43:42):
the Saint Malachi, will anybody, will anybody choose Peter as
the name now? Probably not for fear that it's gonna
be Yeah, you can't write it's it's kind of that's out.
Peter's out. You can't choose it because it's going to
just be linked to that.

Speaker 5 (43:59):
Now, well, unless you believe the pal Marian.

Speaker 3 (44:02):
Pope, oh.

Speaker 5 (44:06):
Peter, that guy. There you go, there you go, it's possible.

Speaker 3 (44:12):
Yeah, why do you think they chose an American? So
I guess I should ans because he gave us that
wonderful donation, I guess I should answer. Why do I
think they chose an America? I'll tell you why I think. Okay,
people are not going to like this answer, but I'm going.

Speaker 5 (44:25):
To be honest.

Speaker 3 (44:26):
I've never been anything else, and it's going to be
a little political. I hate to break it to you.
I really think that there is much concern over the
consequences of a Trump presidency, and I think that what
may be in the minds of the papacy is to
bring a person in who can very much be on

(44:49):
the inside and yet fully understands the outside, which Leo does.
By the way, I mean, he's a very good blend
of If you want a man of the world, he
is a man of the world. I mean, he's been around,
he speaks very fluently, an he understands American culture, which
is actually kind of a I think, a bit of
an anomaly in the rest of the world. I don't
think the rest of the world really, the rest of

(45:09):
the world really gets us that well. I think places
like Australia and the UK probably get us better than
most places. But I still think that I think I think.

Speaker 5 (45:18):
Most get it wrong, though I don't know. I've invested
a lot of my time and energy into understanding American culture.
You know, I listened to American podcasts and I've been
there a few times. And but I think I think
most most Brits and Australians, I think in the stake
they make is they just think Americans are just like

(45:39):
us with a different accent, and but that's not true.
I mean, well, the answer is it's sort of true.
I mean, even your political system. We've talked about it
on the show before, but it is significantly different from
the Westminster system. You know, you have an elected king,
whereas our king doesn't do anything, which is why we
like it.

Speaker 3 (46:00):
And so that wasn't always that way, No, it wasn't.

Speaker 5 (46:05):
That's true. Those those Pilgrim fathers were escaping a rather
different model. They were, and ironically that was the model
they sort of recreated. But you know, centuries later. But
the yeah, the we make our legislature have to do
their job, whereas in America it wasn't the intention. I
don't think of the founders. But your legislature hasn't done

(46:28):
anything for about one hundred years. And that's why everything's
done by executive action, because you have this elected king
and it's at some point there's gonna have to be
a reckoning of that, because it's not it's not how
the republic was designed. But I think a lot, like
a lot most Australians and Brits would have no idea
about that.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
Well, I mean it's I mean, you're talking about the
political dynamic. I mean, I mean, I don't even go
as far as to say it's the American culture of dynamic.
I think is largely misunderstood around the world. I think
we have a reputation for being arrogant and full of
our and I think that's definitely part of uh.

Speaker 5 (47:03):
And I think that's very untrue. I think that, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:07):
It's a misconception because it is it is and I
and I and I and I hate to say it,
but you know, people like Donald Trump don't help that
image very much because he is very much a loud
mouth and and uh and does kind of portray I
think a person that's sort of like, you know, we're
better than everybody else. But that is a New Yorker Yea,
it is an American thing.

Speaker 4 (47:29):
Different diffah.

Speaker 3 (47:32):
So I think in some way, I'm not gonna say
that's the only reason they chose an American, Okay. I'd like
to think that the Holy Spirit does guide that process still,
and I'd like to think that that, you know, the
American component was only part of the decision that there
was also.

Speaker 5 (47:51):
I think they chose the American I think they chose him.

Speaker 3 (47:53):
I hope so, and maybe maybe maybe what maybe what
it was is that this is the best guy and American, yeah, Peru. Yeah,
but you know, I think maybe they're like, you know,
on the side, we've got somebody that can understand that

(48:14):
culture that maybe even Trump would listen to if the
ship does hit the fan, because I mean, you know,
let's face it, you know, sometimes trying to stop wars,
you can actually make them happen.

Speaker 5 (48:25):
And you know, I think it is a benefit to
everybody that he is an American. I'm sure, I'm sure
it was like an added bonus, but I really think
that the well, and this is only you know, from
what I know from the outside. I don't have any
inside information on him. I know, I know Cathy Bishops
who are in the same boat. They don't know anything

(48:46):
more about him either. But I think I think what
was more important was that he could, in a sense,
embody a lot of the things that Pope Francis, you know,
the positive things that Pope Francis put across, but also
be somebody who you know, the other, let's be honest,
the other wing of the church, because it's kind.

Speaker 3 (49:05):
Of he's a centrist. I think he's a centrist as
far as yeah.

Speaker 5 (49:10):
Yeah, so I think that's why they chose him. And
you know, he was he was a Latin American archbishop
and you know he was archbe of Lima and so
he was you know for many years with Francis that
you know, the Conference of Bishops down there. So I
think you see as the people that are very pro
Francis will like him. But I also think the people

(49:30):
that like John Paul the Second will like him as well.

Speaker 3 (49:33):
He's very John Paul the Second like a bit, I think,
and he's also a little bit you know, first younger.
He's a little bit younger than I'm not as young
as John Paul the Second was, but you know, younger
than what we've had. So I think that's also good
to have younger energy in such a position. That's not
a bad thing. I think there's a lot of hope
there with a lot of people. I think good things

(49:55):
can come of it. I like I said, I still
have faith in the Holy Spirit guides the p and
that there's more to it than just making administrative decisions.
So I think all of that kind of combines, but
it doesn't hurt me. Look, there's an old saying in
the church. I don't know if I fully believe it,
but I would like to believe it. Let me say
that that that that God gives us the pope we

(50:17):
need at the time that we get them.

Speaker 5 (50:20):
I hope that's true, including including the awful posts we've had. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 (50:25):
Because we have.

Speaker 5 (50:25):
I mean, you know then Joseph Ratzinger, future Pope the sixteenth.

Speaker 3 (50:33):
Yeah, at the number right.

Speaker 5 (50:38):
He spoke really well about this, you know, before before
he was then elected. It was kind of almost the
punchline that they elected him as pope. You know, he said, yes,
we believe the Holy Spirit is involved in the process,
but it's not what you think, like, I don't think
that the perfect person is chosen, you know, quite the country.
Sometimes we've had evil popes. He said that explicitly. And then,

(50:59):
of course I don't know about five years later they
elected almost the punch line. But I look so far
what he said, so far, what he's written, what he's
spoken as pope. The first thing he did was talk
about the beauty of the Eastern liturgy, for example. Yeah,
and you know, in affirming how important certain aspects of

(51:22):
their esthetic are. You know, someone like me would say, oh,
maybe you're suggesting that the Western Church can learn a
bit about that, and I think he's going But I
love it.

Speaker 3 (51:33):
I mean, I think it's never been done. So it's
also always interesting to see something happen for the first time.
We'll see where it goes. We'll talk more about it.
I guess over the next several seasons, see where we're at.
Decades to come. All right, what's our next question from
the ether?

Speaker 5 (51:49):
Brandon?

Speaker 8 (51:50):
So the third one? In general terms, Satan in Christianity,
archetypically represents the shadow, so would Amara from Buddhism and
Ravana from Hinduism also represent the shadow.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
I would say that they are manifestations of the shadow,
not representations, but manifestations. Okay, So the difference is in
how it affects us. When something just represents Okay, then
what you're basically saying is that this is just a

(52:25):
symbol that someone applied to this particular thing to say
this is what it is. I think it's the opposite
of that. I feel that these become symbols of something
because of their intrinsic connections to whatever it is that
manifests them. So there is and this is why I

(52:46):
say that archetypes are are are preexistent. I don't think
you need human psychology for the archetypes to exist. In fact,
that I would argue that you absolutely do not. I
would say human psychology came about because of the art
types of manifesting us.

Speaker 5 (53:02):
Okay, so the.

Speaker 3 (53:03):
Archetype that that produces or manifests things like.

Speaker 5 (53:08):
The devil or Mara.

Speaker 3 (53:11):
What you're what what's happening here is that these become
expressions of the very fundamental principle that is therein contained
and because those principles are unknowable. I'm going to sound
like a gnostic now, so forgive me. But you know,

(53:31):
because these principles are unknowable, they can only be made
known to us through personifications that we can relate to.
So this is why the devil has sort of like
a humanoid characteristic, why Mara does as well. Even though

(53:52):
you know the the the very essence of the story
of Buddha and Mara is not in any way a
historical event in time. It was a representation of what
Buddha was conquering within himself and what he faced in
that represented through the manifestation of these primordial forces Okay,

(54:18):
So make no mistake about it, if you really want
to look for a satan that's existent outside yourself in
much the same way that that Christians do in terms
of how they want to look at the devil. The
fact of the matter is there is a primordial force

(54:38):
of darkness that we can at least in our model with.
I guess the most contemporary one that we have available
to us today is Carl Jung. So the shadow and
the trickster kind of combine to manifest, almost like parents,
you might say, to manifest these expressions of things that

(55:02):
we see as the representatives of evil within religion. So
the devil becomes that for the Christians, Mara becomes that
for the Buddhists, and so on and so forth. Every
religion kind of has their counterpart to this, because everybody
can recognize, regardless of their theology, that there is some

(55:24):
primordial force of darkness. Now, whether or not that thing
is what we would call evil is where the question is.
So I would say that, and this is true for
Buddhism at least, Mara is not evil, Okay. Mara is
just a force of nature that which keeps us in ignorance,
locked and chained into a pattern of self destructive behavior

(55:47):
through attachment that you know, we don't get out of
until we can wake up to it. That's not evil.
That's a force of nature that has to be transcended,
has to be conquered in a way. And the same
thing is true for the devil in Christianity. That's why
when you see him in the Old Testament, the devil's
not really evil. He's doing a job, he's performing a duty,

(56:11):
whereas part of the court. Whereas in the New Testament
now we get a very different type of devil. The
reason for this again comes back to what we have said.
There is no evil until this primordial force that we
call the shadow, the trickster and union psychology interacts with humanity.

(56:31):
When those forces interact with the fallen nature what the
Jewish people call the yatsahara, Okay, that proclivity to do
the wrong thing, to be selfish, to be self interested,
to be egocentric. When those forces, those primordial forces that
are completely neutral, they just are forces of nature, that's it,

(56:54):
interact with our ability to make choices. That's when you
see evil. So evils not necessarily us, the satans, not
necessarily This fallen nature. What satan is is these forces,
these natural forces, interacting with us, and so therefore then

(57:16):
they can take on the supra intelligent aspects of what
would be called a demon or whatever. But these are again,
make no mistake about it, manifestations, not representations, okay, because
they do in fact exist outside of us. They were
just representations. They would be assigned by us. They are

(57:38):
not being assigned by us. We don't assign the shadow
to the devil. The devil comes to us in the
form that we understand it theologically because of our understanding
of this primordial force, the shadow, which is largely unable.
You see how that works. I mean, I guess that
can sound a little convoluted, but if you follow my

(58:00):
train of thought there, hopefully that clarifies it. Okay, uh,
we you know what I guess. We are at the top.
I know you had another question there, but save it
for next time. Let's take our top of the hour
break since we are actually a couple of minutes past
because of our late start. But when we come back,

(58:21):
we'll be talking with a brand new guest about her
experience with studying the afterlife.

Speaker 2 (58:27):
Don't go away.

Speaker 6 (58:33):
M hmm. Change the.

Speaker 9 (59:00):
Susten to your fellow.

Speaker 7 (59:06):
Here I am same old thing.

Speaker 6 (59:10):
Singing, did know what to say?

Speaker 9 (59:12):
Reality? How the day?

Speaker 10 (59:27):
If I saw another day only to scream at.

Speaker 1 (59:31):
The night, not that I would chose to check in
an of the water realize.

Speaker 9 (59:40):
Sent you same old ways? She again up up the
same honeste nott say a simple boy, change annything.

Speaker 7 (01:00:52):
I don't know.

Speaker 10 (01:00:53):
How to could that brushed against the time maybe once
made me twice so they're around the same or never
know about the same. If a son another day only

(01:01:26):
to scream an, I.

Speaker 9 (01:01:30):
Don't I have a choice to check you'd ever want
to me?

Speaker 10 (01:01:36):
Because opposing your same old ways take it off without
the same birthday, can't.

Speaker 1 (01:01:44):
I leave it over high, old lady. So when the
dog is comings, tell me where you're going?

Speaker 9 (01:02:01):
Fassible n.

Speaker 1 (01:06:07):
Not away, not a.

Speaker 11 (01:06:22):
Note, not agreeay, not agree.

Speaker 3 (01:07:09):
Welcome back everyone to the second hour of Vestiges after Dark.
We are getting ready now to introduce you to our
brand new guest to talk about the afterlife. It's going
to be an interesting time. I think it always is
when you talk about subjects like this. I know a
lot of you paranormal fans are going to be glued

(01:07:30):
to your cell phones, your smart TVs, wherever you're watching this.
You don't want to miss it. Don't go away. Our

(01:08:52):
guest tonight is Elizabeth and In, a science minded skeptic
whose personal loss launched her in to one of the
most fascinating and unconventional journeys imaginable, the search for evidence
of an afterlife. After the passing of her father in
twenty fifteen, Elizabeth began exploring mediumship, near death experiences in

(01:09:14):
paranormal phenomena through the lens of reason, data, and scientific inquiry.
Despite identifying as an atheist and a cultural jew what
she uncovered challenged many of her beliefs and expectations. That
journey became the basis for two books in the WTF
Just Happened series, in which she chronicles her investigation into

(01:09:38):
grief healing and the growing body of evidence suggesting that
consciousness may continue after death. She is also the host
of the WTF Just Happened podcast, where she continues her
exploration of life after death. Elizabeth offers an accessible and
grounded approach to a topic often shrouded in mysticism, making

(01:10:00):
her a unique and compelling voice in the field of
afterlife research. Please welcome Elizabeth Enton to the show. How
you doing tonight?

Speaker 6 (01:10:09):
A list?

Speaker 7 (01:10:12):
Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 3 (01:10:13):
Yeah, we're happy to have you with us. Do you
want me to call you Elizabeth or Liz? I know
you go by Liz here, so yeah, you can.

Speaker 7 (01:10:19):
Call me Liz.

Speaker 3 (01:10:20):
Okay, all right, fine, Okay, we'll call you Liz. So
thank you for joining us tonight. And this is a
topic that is of great interest to this audience, and
we cover it quite often, at least sometimes a couple
times a season, with different guests from different perspectives, sometimes
people that had near death experiences, sometimes people that are mediums,

(01:10:41):
but never one quite like your story, where you're coming
into this from a completely skeptical scientific point of view
and also from an atheist background. I'm not sure you're
still considering yourself that today you'll have to tell us,
but I'm curious you do. Okay, this is fascinating, So
let's talk about the start, then of your journey. So

(01:11:02):
it began with the loss of your father. Let's start
there and see where it takes us.

Speaker 7 (01:11:07):
Sure, so my dad passed in twenty fifteen, and as
everyone heard, I mean I thought there was zero chance
of it afterlife. It wasn't even on my radar as
a possibility. And then I just had a thought that.
First of all, my very first thought was that, you know,

(01:11:28):
could there possibly be some form of time travel? Googled that.
You know, that's a whole long thing to go into,
so I won't go into all the details, but essentially, yes,
theoretically you can travel. You know, it's not very practical,
but accured Diinstein all these theories of time relativity. So
then my very next thought was, well, if something as
indisputable as time isn't how we see it, what else?

(01:11:50):
So then my very next thought was at this point
I assumed consciousness was created by brainer on. So I thought, well,
if you think of the concept up of eternity and
eternal big bangs, big crunches, evolutions of species, it actually
seems to make no sense that another set of brain

(01:12:10):
neurons would create another at least another person or being
that you got to be. You know, so the way
there are multiple lives, not necessarily exactly you again, but
just you would get the experience of being conscious again
in some form. So I googled that, and because I
just had a brief thought like if that's the case.

(01:12:31):
Is there any way, somehow, by some mechanisms, I can't
begin to understand that there's memories in some way of
someone who had that experience of lag and front. That
was the biggest game changer because I found the research
of doctors I Stevenson, who had already passed away, and

(01:12:53):
his protege, doctor Jim Tucker, child psychiatrists, child psychiatrists, professors
of psychiatry at the University of Virginia and studying cases
of kids with past life memories in very like data
driven ways. And I read like everything I could find
in them. I listened to every interview, read every article,
read their books, and I was just like, this is

(01:13:16):
the biggest game changer that there could be. And just
with you know, once you find one of the researchers
in this group that are handling this in a very
serious data driven way, you kind of find them all
because there aren't that many. And yes, I found doctor
Jim Tucker was part you know, as I said, is
professor at the University of Virginia. So I found a
whole research group there, the Division of Perceptual Studies, and

(01:13:42):
multiple people there were studying this. So that was just
such a game changer.

Speaker 3 (01:13:46):
Yeah, I mean I would I would think that, you know,
when you're coming at this with a worldview that you've
adopted and accepted as truth, anything that sometimes shakes up
your paradigms going to get your attention, you know. I mean,
I think that's that's true regardless of which side of
the coin you follow, your you find yourself on. So,
you know, as a skeptic meeting the supernatural in this

(01:14:11):
kind of way and identifying as an atheist, how do
you reconcile the result of your research with your your worldview?
How do you how have you personally done that?

Speaker 7 (01:14:26):
Well, I mean, my worldview completely changed. I do still
say atheist because you know, I don't believe in a god,
Like I haven't seen any evidence there's this one supreme
being that people tend to call God that would create
all this. I mean, maybe I can't say I know
that's not the case, but there's absolutely zero evidence of that.

(01:14:50):
It just there seems to be evidence that our consciousness
operates outside of a brain instead of as created by one.
And I mean to jump to say that means as
a god is just huge leap of Like I guess
you could say leap of faith, leap of like just
jumping to conclusions and making, you know, drawing a huge

(01:15:12):
leap of explanation.

Speaker 3 (01:15:14):
So sure, yeah, because you have to, I guess, make
a lot of inferences in order to draw that conclusion
or make that conclusion. Whereas what you're doing, and I
understand this, and what you're doing with with trying to
determine whether or not there's a continuity of consciousness after
death seems to actually be more straightforward in a way

(01:15:37):
than trying to understand the origin of all things. I
mean that it seems easier to try to figure that
out at least.

Speaker 9 (01:15:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:15:44):
Unfortunately, I don't know if it's possible to figure out,
at least at this point the origin. I would love to,
I mean, trust me, I'm very curious about that. But yeah,
just to our consciousness not being made by a brain
does not mean that an individual being that we all

(01:16:05):
need to worship, did it.

Speaker 3 (01:16:07):
Yeah, I can see what you're saying because my understanding
of consciousness, and I look at it from an esoteric
point of view, consciousness, I've always said is actually brain activity.
I think what is really what's outside is awareness, which

(01:16:30):
I think is a fundamental property of the cosmos itself.
So I think when you take awareness and then you
filter it through the lens of an individual brain, then
you get a conscious experience, which is what we have.
But I think the awareness is always there, and even
if the consciousness fades at death, everything that consciousness experience

(01:16:56):
is still very much part of the core awareness that
always is and always was as fundamental to the universe.
Because one thing I think we can say scientifically is
that there's no evidence to suggest that something can't come
from nothing. We always seem to whatever is produced, Anything
new that happens in science, whether it be like the

(01:17:18):
process of evolution, which I do believe in and accept
as the best model that we have, evolution, I would say,
still comes from something before it. Something has to trigger
the reaction and then it and the new thing still
has the properties of the old thing. Like when we
have children, right they they carry on our characteristics through DNA.

(01:17:41):
So if we have awareness, then that must be a
property of this universe itself. It has to be, because
we couldn't have it if it weren't. The customers doesn't
seem to produce things that are not of itself, and
so we know consciousness is here because you and I
are having this conversation, so I can see where from
your point of view, I can see where that doesn't

(01:18:03):
necessarily require God to make that conclusion. And and you
know that's that's a that's a very fair assessment. So
when you when you talk about studying mediumship, that's another
big topic of interest on this show.

Speaker 5 (01:18:17):
We've had many mediums.

Speaker 3 (01:18:18):
On How does that play into what you've experienced. Do
you see this as insight into another dimension, another state
of being or do you think that do you see
this as perhaps more mental data that's being, you know,
connected to the unconscious.

Speaker 5 (01:18:37):
How do you see it?

Speaker 7 (01:18:39):
I see it as it seems to be communicating with
another dimension of consciousness, another state. I think it's some
of the strongest evidence of continuation of consciousness that exists.
I mean, what I have seen and the data I've
read on it and what I've experienced on myself is

(01:19:00):
just inexplicable by you know, Yeah, the list brain, you can.

Speaker 4 (01:19:07):
Do experience and I was I was conscious after technically
I had flatline. So three times, yeah, three times imagine that. Yeah,
So yeah, there's definitely you're.

Speaker 5 (01:19:21):
Gonna be in w T f three. Yeah, want to
interview you next?

Speaker 7 (01:19:34):
Oh my god, I'd love you to come share your story.

Speaker 4 (01:19:37):
Yeah, it's a doozy.

Speaker 3 (01:19:39):
Well, you have a podcast, so maybe you guys can
you know, she's come on our show, you can go
on her show. But she's got a really interesting story
and hers was a negative nd yeah, not a positive one.

Speaker 7 (01:19:50):
Okay, yeah, okay, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:19:53):
Brought you back to the church, so it's kind of
a different oh different okay.

Speaker 6 (01:19:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:19:59):
And I have familiar with your the DOPS program in Virginia.
They've been around since the sixties and they've got over
like sixty thousand cases of interviewing children and some adults
I believe who who have a reincarnation episode, and they've
done research where they can verify. You know, you have

(01:20:20):
a five year old talking about being a fighter pilot
World War Two, and sure enough they can narrow it
down to the name of the pilot where he went down,
and the child knew where he went down. Crazy stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:20:33):
I've seen that.

Speaker 3 (01:20:34):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, so you would you accept reincarnation
as something that happens or how do you see that?

Speaker 7 (01:20:41):
I do. In fact, it's like kind of almost my
go to where you know, if I now think the
worst case scenario would be if consciousness is not created
by a brain, I mean, it's sorry, is created by
a brain and we don't survive. I feel like, in
a way, there still would be reincarnation for the reason
I said in the beginning, like time will go on eternally,

(01:21:04):
They'll be turtle, big bangs, big crunches, bursts of universe,
deaths of universe, evolution of humans are equally you know, conscious, complex,
conscious species. There's just no way when you think, even
if it took ten trillion years another set of brain neurons,
when create someone, you've got to be again someone else.
So I'm like, to me, that's the it's pretty much

(01:21:26):
a guarantee. And then you add, you know what I
think now that consciousness most likely is not created by
a brain but entangles with one, then reincarnations still exists.

Speaker 6 (01:21:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:21:38):
The doctor, Jim Tucker doctor and Stephenson's cases are so strong. Yeah,
that I can't really think of anything else that could
explain it.

Speaker 3 (01:21:46):
Either brains could be in tennis, couldn't they It could
be that they just receive a signal from whatever this
this higher principle is, and that we get an individual
finely tuned part of that signal that becomes what we
see as our own identity. That maybe the thoughts are
not in here, but just being transmitted so they feel

(01:22:09):
like they're in here, sort of like the well, I mean,
people are listening to our voices right now on the
speakers of whatever device they're using. We're not in those devices, right,
but it sounds like we are. It sounds like we're coming.

Speaker 5 (01:22:22):
From the disappointing time. They're listening to it as well.

Speaker 3 (01:22:25):
Yes, and yeah, that's gonna be.

Speaker 5 (01:22:26):
One hundred years time. It could be a thousand years
time exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:22:29):
So it's it's time. Particularly with digital media. We talked
about that last week, you know, these shows that were everything,
all these podcasters, you know, Liz, you and me, We
could we could be listened to for the next ten
thousand years if if all of this.

Speaker 5 (01:22:44):
Data is preserved, you know. So it's kind of like.

Speaker 3 (01:22:47):
There's a timelessness to it, right, and it would always
sound like it's happening now. So I wonder sometimes if
that the experience of humanity is not really just a
projection of some higher reality that we just experience virtually,
not not in the sense of like how they talk
about simulation theory where we're in like some VR, some

(01:23:08):
complicated computer. I don't accept that, but I think the
experience could be very similar to that in the sense
that maybe this is just an artificial construct of perception.
Perhaps what I'm getting at, and this is where I'm
going with my next question for you, Liz.

Speaker 5 (01:23:23):
Is that.

Speaker 3 (01:23:26):
While I am a Christian, my metaphysics is perhaps far
more Buddhist than Christian because I don't feel that the
metaphysics we have in Christianity is really adequate, and I
think that Buddhist metaphysics is far superior. And yeah, it
works for me, and we talk a lot about how

(01:23:46):
to make it work on this show so that other
people can kind of see that there's really not a
conflict between the two worldviews there. But one of the
things that I find remarkable and in terms of after life,
and I want to get your opinion on this, but
this is not to challenge your paradigms, but maybe they will.
I don't know, but the Tibetan Book of the Dead

(01:24:06):
is of particular interest to me because we've had mediums
on this show and I accept, you know, they're what
they tell me as truth. I don't question the authenticity
of what they say. I accept it, you know, because
I do feel that we are all having an authentic
experience here, and even if it might not be an
absolute truth, I think there's a conventional truth there that

(01:24:29):
needs to be honored and respected, and I think the
best we can sometimes achieve is conventional truth anyway.

Speaker 5 (01:24:35):
So it's like whose truth is.

Speaker 3 (01:24:37):
Better than anyone else's And you just have to kind
of accept people for where they're at and different experiences
of course going to shape that. And that's also another factor.
But in Buddhism, the Tibetan Book of the Dead essentially
takes you through a journey of what is to be
experienced at that point of death. And death is not
something that just like lights out, or it's not your

(01:24:59):
heart stopped, your brain activity stopped, and so now this
is what you experience. It's a process, sort of an
ongoing process that takes about three days honestly to complete,
which is really quite terrifying when you consider that sometimes
you know the corners are already cutting you open long,
you know, well before that three days, so you know

(01:25:22):
you could have some kind of awareness of that if
you're not fully detached from what you think is you, which,
of course, for our purposes, is our body. So what
I sometimes wonder about near death experiences and mediumship and
what people have shared with us about their experiences with

(01:25:43):
the afterlife, is how do we know that it isn't
exactly what's being depicted in the Tibetan Book of the Dead,
And if you're not familiar with it, let me just
mention it for the ease of it the audience and
for anybody else who might need the background to that
Book of the Dead basically says is that when you die,

(01:26:04):
once the process has completed, you're going to be faced
with a clear light. And that could be interpreted as
the light that sometimes people see, but oftentimes it's not
the correct one. That depending upon how we lived, how
well we cultivated our awareness, will determine how easily we

(01:26:28):
see the clear light. If we miss the clear light,
we become distracted and usually fearful because of the unknown
aspects of it, and that forces us to gravitate to
these illusions that the mind immediately starts to fabricate in
order to feel safe again. And so what it will

(01:26:49):
often do is start producing phantoms of people's loved ones
and expectations of what they should or want to see
based upon their religious worldviews. So if they believe in Jesus,
Jesus might be there with open arms waiting to welcome
them to heaven. If they believe, if they think they're
you know, their loved ones are going to be there,
their pets, whatever, then that's what they see, and that

(01:27:11):
these are, in the Buddhist mindset, exactly what you want
to recognize as illusions and avoid because they get in
the way of experiencing the clear light, which leads to
what Buddhism calls nirvana, and the nirvana means extinguishing, the
extinguishing of suffering essentially, but also you know, the being

(01:27:33):
stuck on the wheel of some sorrow which you just
keep coming back and suffering over and over and over again.
So in Buddhism, reincarnation is not a good thing. Reincarnation
is exactly that what you're trying to transcend. But I'm
curious if you think that that's a possibility, because in
Tibetan Buddhism, particularly all these after death experiences that people report,

(01:27:54):
all these NDEs are as they would see it illusions
that they're happening, but they're not actually leading you anywhere
except back on the wheel of I'm sorry to reincarnate
and have to do this all over again. It doesn't
lead you out. So I sometimes wonder when people say
they saw Jesus, you know, and I get that sometimes

(01:28:15):
people do have NDEs. They said that they met Jesus,
and I say to myself, Okay, that's beautiful, But was
it really Jesus or was it an illusion because you
felt fear and instead of going in the direction of
the clear light, which would lead to dissillusion. In Buddhism,
it's the end of the self. It's the it's the

(01:28:35):
not to the no soul doctrine, which can be scary, right,
So I'm curious. Yeah, no, it's not pleasant.

Speaker 5 (01:28:42):
So is there a annihilation?

Speaker 6 (01:28:44):
Then?

Speaker 5 (01:28:44):
Self annihilation through self knowledge is that.

Speaker 3 (01:28:47):
It's the annihilation of the illusion of self. But by
limiting the self, one awakens to the reality that there
was never a self. There was only the absolute, which
is beyond comprehension. Now Christians would call that God, okay,
and and Buddhism would for all intentsive purposes, they don't

(01:29:10):
use the word God. Because it implies to it's too
limiting to the Buddhist. The Buddhist says, no, this is
beyond being. You know, when we say God, we think
of a being, we think of a of a personality.
And Buddhism would say, no, what we're talking about is
well beyond any of that. Those would be illusions too,
and and but it would be at the highest level
of what we would call in Christian the be a

(01:29:32):
tyfic vision, which would be this, this orthosis would be
even better, this idea of returning to the perfection of
the divine, and there would be no individuality in the
same sense that we have it now, because there'd be
a state of wholeness. There's not going to be time
or moment or or linear experiences. It's all back to

(01:29:56):
this singular focus of perfection. And that's beyond comprehension. So
Buddhism doesn't even try to explain what that's like. It
just calls it a bliss, or it just calls it nirvana,
you know, the extinguishing. So it's not nihilistic in the
sense of I mean it's shunyata. It's the empty room
that is fully illuminated. There's nothing in it, but there
is absolute, perfect, perfect light. And that's because there's no form,

(01:30:21):
there's nothing that you can characterize it as. So I
always like to ask every guest that comes on, who has,
you know, researches this, or has had these experiences, what
they think about that perspective, because in some ways, I
guess I used to be a Buddhist. I eventually returned
to the church. Obviously I'm a bishop now, but I

(01:30:41):
never you know, It's like, you know, I can't get
rid of the Buddhism. It's it's always going to be there.
And and so I sometimes wonder, you know, are these
mediumship experiences connecting with the with the the phantoms of
the bar dough and not necessarily the actual thing that

(01:31:03):
we should be actually focusing on, you know? Is this
going to get us back in some sorrow?

Speaker 5 (01:31:07):
You know?

Speaker 3 (01:31:07):
Some people think the incarnation is a great thing. I
tend to take the Buddhist point of view. I think
we should try to avoid it if we can. I
don't want to be back here again. I've had one
was enough for me, you know. But I'm curious. I've
done enough talking. I want to hear your thoughts on this.

Speaker 7 (01:31:21):
Now okay, So in terms of could this be true,
I don't know. I haven't seen any evidence to think this.
To me, being like giving going to someoneeness sounds horrible.
I want to keep coming back. I want to try
other planets. I would guess it's probably a lot more
complicated than that. There are a lot more dimensions. I
would guess there's types. I see you aust a lot

(01:31:44):
of questions. I'll try to address multiple aspects of it.

Speaker 3 (01:31:47):
I heard a lot at you. I'm sorry, I enjoyed it.

Speaker 7 (01:31:51):
I found it fascinating. Yeah, I mean one aspect is
saying it's all like an illusion, you're not really seeing
your loved ones. I mean, I think I'm gonna say
I don't agree with that for the following reasons. Most
near death experiencers say it feels realer than real and
more real than here. There's something called peak in Darien,

(01:32:16):
where amongst their loved ones that they see who's passed.
Sometimes they'll see someone who passed that they didn't know
had passed. I can go into some specific stories about that.

Speaker 3 (01:32:26):
Yeah, yes, please, And first before I.

Speaker 7 (01:32:30):
Go into that, I'll just address you brop like seeing Jesus.
I do think maybe you see a lot of other beings,
you know, and maybe people who are like old fashioned
or guides, and maybe you interpreted them that way, just
the way like I mean, our eyes are already interpreting colors.
We don't know if everyone sees the same thing. Our
physical being and our perceptions are already interpreting things here.

(01:32:51):
Why would there not be some of that there? And
I just have an interesting story about that too that
I'll tell. I'll tell the Jesus one first, and then
I'll tell the Pegandarian stories. So okay, so the Jesus one.
It's an interesting story. There's a researcher called doctor Melvin Morris,

(01:33:12):
and he works with He was a child anesthesiologist, I believe,
if I hope, I don't have any of that wrong way.
He did work with children in emergency situations, and he
spoke with some children who had mere death experiences. That's
how he first learned about them during his work as
a doctor. And one child came back and said, I
played with this man, with this big beard, I played

(01:33:34):
with this wizard. I mean, I could have been his
great great grandfather, you know who knows, And he said, wizard.
Doctor Morris interviewed him like two years later, and he said,
I met Jesus. So you can see how cultural bias
and perceptions must have come in because a little kid
probably told everyone in his Christian culture I met this
wizard and they're like, oh no, honey, that was Jesus.

Speaker 3 (01:33:56):
You know soy, yeah, that makes sense, and I mean
you would you would interpret things according to what you
understand your worldview to be.

Speaker 5 (01:34:06):
We do that right now.

Speaker 3 (01:34:07):
I mean the whole arguments we get into in the world,
particularly political ones, are usually because people are coming at
politics from an honest worldview. It's what's true to them
and it looks ridiculous to the other side, but it
is how this works. So it makes sense that this
would continue on. Yes, yeah, I see, yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:34:30):
Yeah, I think that's a good example, and like that's
why I'll say one quickly. I positive we'll get into it.
That's it's probably good not to pass laws on others
that bring your world political worldview, you know, live it
that way yourself.

Speaker 5 (01:34:42):
I agree with that completely.

Speaker 7 (01:34:43):
There's yeah, yeah, you know, we're.

Speaker 5 (01:34:46):
Living not lit although it might be unavoidable because whether
it's religious or not, there's a worldview that people ascribe
to and feel should be dominant. Even if that worldview
is you know, freedom to do whatever you want, that's
still that's still in a sense. You know, if I
impose that on somebody else, I'm still imposing it, do

(01:35:07):
you know what I mean? Like, So that's why it's complicated.
It's why you can never create a system.

Speaker 3 (01:35:13):
Where everybody will be satisfied, because it's actually important.

Speaker 5 (01:35:17):
You know, there's a series of dogmatic principles behind everything
that's being applied. And now they might be Christian or Jewish,
they might be Islamic, they might be materialistic, atheistic, but
they're still there. And I think, you know, it behooves
people who perhaps are pushing alternative world views, and they're

(01:35:42):
every right to do so, but to recognize that they're
bringing in their own dogma and doctrine, even if it's
not a religious you know, a traditionally religious dogma doctrine.

Speaker 4 (01:35:52):
Even anarchists to have their.

Speaker 5 (01:35:56):
View lean anarchy is a dogmatic world like you can't
escape that. So and that's why, you know, we're kind
of bound to this sort of conflict. It's just how
you how you have the conflict is really important. Paradox
I mean, you know, I've kind of I've kind of
held off because you know, I'm much more interested in

(01:36:17):
and people are much more interested in what you've got
to say to name and me. But I just wanted
to a point of kind of commonality is that I
didn't grow up in a religious household at all. They
were you know, they were anti religion. I'm from England,
I'm not from America. We're not so upset with religion,
and so I just grew up in that standard. You know,

(01:36:39):
probably my grandparents went to church occasionally, like sort of thing. So,
but I grew up with with a scientific worldview and
and and going back to the you know, these appearances
of Jesus, because my first encounter with serious encounters with
Christianity was with with much more the sorts of churches
where that was a feature. I'm now the opposite of that.

(01:37:02):
I'm like, you know, Latin mass ultra traad. Actually it
would be very inconvenient if Jesus appeared to me. Okay, So,
but you know I was around people that did, and
you know, what shapes our worldview. And again, at the
risk of being dangerously Christian here, I think amongst the

(01:37:23):
first words of the Gospel are from John the Baptist.
You know metanoiity change your mind, allow your mind to
be changed. What happens when people, in a sense choose
a worldview, whether it's a religious of faith based one
or not, is we then we essentially set the lens

(01:37:45):
through which we see everything or you know, until something
comes along to disrupt that. You know this is true.
This is actually the scientific method, by the way, that's
how science should be done. And so the change your
mind is such an important concept in certainly in Christianity,
in Judaism two. If you know the bishops spoke about awareness.

(01:38:09):
You know, really do you think about the Genesis story.
The first result of the fall is awareness because Adam
and Eve noticed that they're naked, and before that they didn't.
They weren't aware. And it's that sort of that self
awareness that paradoxically creates a sort of deficit in us,

(01:38:30):
that we're self conscious and neurotic and all the things
that go along with that. But also on the positive side,
it it makes us see our place in the world
and what we have to offer those around us, and
wrestling with those things that we encounter. But what I
used to say to people in the sort of charismatic movement.

(01:38:52):
Who are you know Jesus appeared at the end of
my bed and said, you know, come to me. I'm here.
Is I used to say, I feel really sorry for
you and then look astounded. Well, because faith has been
stolen from you, because faith is actually about believing in
things that you can't see and fascinating, Yeah, and so

(01:39:15):
and so and actually, therefore, I think it's I can't
put restrictions on God. God can do what he wants.
But I think it's very unlikely that God would intervene
in our lives in that way. I think he does
it through other means. He might it might be done
through a dream, it might be done through a kind
of experience that you interpret in that way. More often

(01:39:37):
than not, it's done through other people. He senses other
people to help us out. But yeah, so I kind
of I wondered if you, given that, given that you're
looking at using the scientific methods to look at essentially
how people are experiencing and interpreting things that have happened
in their mind or in reality, whether you've come to

(01:39:59):
any kind of but you've analyzed that sort of the
problem of the mindset, you know.

Speaker 7 (01:40:06):
Yeah, like people's worldview assessing like I.

Speaker 5 (01:40:10):
Mean, we are yeah, how interpret Yeah, like.

Speaker 7 (01:40:15):
When someone goes to medium or something or yeah, answer this,
then I'm going to go back to the Pekandarian experience.

Speaker 3 (01:40:25):
Yeah, I don't want to miss that one.

Speaker 7 (01:40:32):
Yeah, I mean I actually at first, I was very
I guess, frightened when I'd hear people interpret things in
different ways because someone would say, again, like we'll take
a near death experience or let's say something going to
a medium or having experience. They'd be like, oh my god,
so I saw an angel and there was God. And
then I was like So at first, I'd be like,

(01:40:54):
oh my god, this is all like am I allowed
to swear on this time?

Speaker 5 (01:40:58):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (01:40:58):
Absolutely, we do it all the time, weized.

Speaker 7 (01:41:03):
Okay, so I would be like, oh my god, this
is just a bunch of bullshit, Like it's all fantasy.
It's like, I mean, with all due respect that one
disrespect religion. I mean I would have before I even
knew this stuff existed, I would have done anything. I
think there was like yeah, yeah, wishful thinking and fantasy
and like so I was like no. But then as

(01:41:27):
I started to research more and more and more, I
was like, oh, it's their worldview. Like I could take
an experience I had and I would say, you know,
I felt these weird like buzzy feelings, and I felt
almost sensations like a few inches above my body, which
are a few weird things that have happened to me,
even though I don't consider myself the type of person
who can have experiences. And I saw kind of some light,

(01:41:50):
you know, I would say, like that was what else
would be? Like I felt angels around me and went
out and God was hugging me, you know. I mean,
it's just what type of vocabulary do you have to
describe an experience? And if I have like a kind
of like spiritual experience, I don't even really consider myself
that spiritual. I just consider myself very like scientific and materialists.

(01:42:13):
And it seems materialists doesn't have to just mean consciousness
created by a brain, although that's how it tends to
be used. It could just be kind of how you
see things. And if consciousness is not created by a brain,
that just means there's some type of quantum particle and
other dimensions, just like string theory starting to touch upon

(01:42:34):
that's the source of it, and you know that's just
we don't know enough to explain it yet.

Speaker 5 (01:42:40):
So yeah, I think, but your materialism was challenged by
your materialism, I will, I'll let you get back on
your thread. But your materialism was essentially challenged by death.
Right Now that that's that's a very common problem, right,
that's a human problem. And so because you know, I
used to say, well, every funeral I ever do you know,
I always say to people I'm going to I'm going

(01:43:01):
to prove to you that eternity exists and does exist.
But whether another question, well, well, well I guess I
made that claim too, because I say, when, yeah, so
do I. When we gather at a funeral around our
loved one, we don't we don't ever say we used
to love them. You know, there isn't a past tense

(01:43:24):
we love them. And so what's that? Now, that's not
just that's not just a linguistic exercise that I'm talking about.
I'm not you know, I'm not trying to be clever,
but there's a sense where we you know, we have
pictures of people who died in our family, you know
the world, we don't ever say, oh, you know, I
used to like them or I used to love them, right,
you know, there's a sense of it's a permanent, covenantal

(01:43:48):
relationship that can't end. Right, But it sounds like like,
I mean, you know you're kind of tapping into that
too in what you're doing.

Speaker 7 (01:43:59):
Yeah, I think there is something most likely eternal and
yeah and not again not created by a brain. But
it's how do you explain it? I think a lot
of it, Yeah, comes down to vocabulary. I think that
was kind of the question you're asking me, like my
thoughts of in the beginning. Yet when people would use

(01:44:20):
very very very spiritual language or very religious language, I
at first, yeah, I would get really shaken by that
because I wanted this to be true more than anything
in the world. I was like, I would do it.
I mean I was not someone who was like, oh,
you know, when you die, you die, and I liked that.
I just assumed that was how it worked. So I

(01:44:42):
tried to never think about it because it was so sad.
So I didn't want to lie to myself because you know,
I would never feel right. I would know I was most.

Speaker 5 (01:44:49):
People in the West. That's what most people in the
West do. Now, It's why they're really bad at dealing
with death, and I know because I have to help
them do it.

Speaker 7 (01:44:58):
Yeah, sorry, oh yeah, no, no worries. You mean they
lie to themselves like they'll be like, I believe in
religion God, and just you don't think they really.

Speaker 5 (01:45:07):
No, No, I mean I mean that that that you know,
most of the people who are buried, or at least
their families have not been particularly religious at all, and
so they've never they've never thought about death. Death's just
something that it's because it's become a taboo in the
Western world, which is not in the non West. You know,
this is this is the result of of secular materialism

(01:45:30):
that we that death death in a sense has no
has no well it does have meaning, but but people
don't contemplate that meaning on a regular basis, and so
they just sort of put it off and so and
you know, we'll take a pill or you know, will
live forever one day because science. But actually, when when

(01:45:51):
when their grandma dies, when their dad dies, when their
partner dies, when their child dies, they they're confronted with it,
with the reality that they're not prepared for because you know,
we've kind of just we anesthetize ourselves from I'm distracting you.
I'll stop, I'm following.

Speaker 7 (01:46:12):
So yeah, yeah, I think yeah so oh and then
the Pindari.

Speaker 5 (01:46:19):
Near let's hear you, I mean, I.

Speaker 7 (01:46:21):
Hear There's so many of these when you start reading
the literature. But I'll share a specific one out of
your listeners. Know who doctor Bruce Grayson is. He is
so a psychiatrist, and he's part of Division of Perceptual
Studies at the University of Virginia, and he researches near
death experiences. And you know, he thought pretty much like

(01:46:44):
I did, like very materialist, and he was shocked when
he learned in the first near death experience that happened
to a patient of his. So research and research. In
one of the cases he shares, and again, there's so
many like this, And it's when someone dies and you
don't know they died, and you see them with your
loved ones who have died, when you have a near
death experience. And this young man died in the hospital,

(01:47:11):
he sees, I guess he'd or no, he might have
not been a young man. Okay, think of another one,
but sorry, this man had died in the hospital. He'd
been being taken care of for a little while, and
they resuscitate him and he comes back and he's ends

(01:47:31):
up sharing his near death experience and he shares loved
ones who'd passed, like maybe parents' grandparents, and he's like,
you know, what's so odd is I saw one of
the nurses who'd been helping take care of me, and
she was like, twenty one hadn't been sick. Because you know,
if you see like your ninety five year old grandmother
who's been on hospice but still alive, like yeah, you

(01:47:53):
could put that in your imagination because that you know,
she's not going to be here very long. And he said,
that's so odd. I saw her and she said to me,
tell my parents I love them and thank you for like,
I don't know, the red convertible or some car. And
it turned out the nurses starts sobbing and the doctor
starts sobbing. She her parents had given her red converbile

(01:48:14):
for her like twenty third birthday that weekend, and she
died in a car accident while he'd been in a coma.

Speaker 5 (01:48:20):
So yeah, you know that was just to explain, isn't it.

Speaker 7 (01:48:27):
Yeah? Yeah, So why would she have been a figment
of his imagination, and you could say maybe in that case.
I wonder with this case, oh, while in a coma,
could the nurses and doctors have been talking about her
and he overheard it and brought it in. And if
this was the only case of that, I would say yes.
But there's multiple ones, including for go back a couple
hundred years. If you start looking at the history of

(01:48:49):
the Society for Cyclical Research, and there's sometimes ones that
were not in the same place at all. It'll be
someone who died in an accident in another town. So yeah. Otherwise,
if they were all like this, where it was someone
in the hospital and they overheard that, that would be different.

Speaker 3 (01:49:09):
When I was in college, when I was in my
junior year, I think, no, it was my sophomore year
of undergrad school.

Speaker 10 (01:49:18):
I was.

Speaker 5 (01:49:20):
I had a lot of.

Speaker 3 (01:49:21):
Night classes, so I would spend most of my afternoons
sort of relaxing. I do my studies in the morning,
and then I would sort of relax in the afternoon
and then go to class. One time, I was just
particularly tired and I went, I went and laid down,

(01:49:46):
and now I was under a significant amount of stress.
You know, graduate school, I mean undergrad school will do
that too, and doesn't it And so I I could,
I mean I could, I could relate this to a
stress reaction, and maybe it was stress that triggered it,
but the experience was quite profound, and I've talked about

(01:50:08):
on this show, but I want to get your thoughts
on it. What ended up happening was I I woke
up with your classic sleep paralysis, not being able to
move but being fully awake. And it was a bit

(01:50:31):
frightening because you know, the first thought that comes to
your head, or at least did in my case, is
you know, I'm having a stroke, I'm paralyzed whatever. You're
not thinking it's a natural reaction because it feels so
unnatural when when you're in it. But suddenly, I don't
know what shifted or what I could not move. I
tried to move, and all of a sudden, I felt

(01:50:53):
in your classic near out of body experience vibration, this
very loud, roaring noise, and the next thing I knew,
I I mean it felt like pop. It popped out
and I and I was floating and looking down on
myself laying there, and it was, as you mentioned earlier,

(01:51:18):
this wasn't a near death but it was similar in
the sense of being outside yourself. It felt more real
than real, And at that point I guess I had
gotten over the uneasiness of it, and I thought, this
is intriguing, and I want to see what I can do.
So I noticed I could go through walls, I could

(01:51:41):
go up to the I was in a condominium, a
high rise condominium at the time, that was where my
my condo was. And I went up to the to
the room above me, and I could see I could
see the unit above me. And then the next thing
I knew is I said, I want to see if
I could, like, is there anything else I can do
with this, you know, other than just float around and looking,

(01:52:03):
you know, eavesdrops on people's units in my building. And
the first start, the first thought that came to my
mind was I always wanted to be a composer, but
never pursued any kind of musical ability or talent or
you know, never learned an instrument. So always was sort

(01:52:24):
of regretful about that. And suddenly I found myself in
this I can't even describe it. It was it felt
like a space that was the essence, the intrinsic essence
of music. Itself and in that space, whatever it was,

(01:52:45):
I can't again describe it. It wasn't geometric, it wasn't
there was no color there, but then it felt like
there was every color there. It wasn't darkness, but it
wasn't exactly light either. It was it was it was
pure awareness and absolute knowledge of what music is intrinsically,

(01:53:06):
and suddenly I said, well, I understand it all. It's
as if everything being in that space made me one
with that space, and I suddenly could find myself and
I did composing these intricate, our long symphonies in this moment,

(01:53:31):
and it was absolutely again no musical training at all. No,
I mean at that time didn't really have any talent
and never even picked up instruments. But in this moment,
I could play. I knew how to play every instrument,
I knew how to write, I knew the meaning of everything.
And that distracted me, and all of a sudden I

(01:53:53):
fell back and I slammed into my body at such
a rate that it hurts. At that moment, I awoke
and got up and I could actually move around like normal,
and I thought, what the hell was that you got tapped?

Speaker 1 (01:54:09):
In?

Speaker 3 (01:54:09):
I got tapped in and so I didn't think any
too much of it until later that week my friend
and I. My friend was a curator at one of
the museums nearby, and this was in Palm Beach, Florida.
So he was a curator at one of the museums
on the island, and we were going to dinner or
something that night, and he said he had to stop

(01:54:31):
by his office to pick up something. So I went
with him and went into the museum with him after
hours while he went to the office, and inside their
atrium there was a massive grand piano, and I don't
know what possessed me, but I went over to the
piano and for a brief moment, I remembered what that

(01:54:55):
experience was. I understood how to play the piano, and
I I sat down and I could play it like
a master pianist. It was absolutely as if I had
flawless training with absolute talent and have been doing this
all my life. And my friend comes running out, because

(01:55:16):
he had known me from several years at this point,
he goes running out because he was like, what is
that music? And he says to me, he says, I
didn't know you could play that piano much much less
like that, and I said, I can't play the piano.
He says, so what are you doing? And all of
a sudden it was gone. It was like, I don't

(01:55:36):
know what I'm doing, and I could, I could get
little glimpses of it back, and many years later I
bought myself a really good keyboard to try to find
it again. And while I can get little bits and
pieces from time to time, I can never get the
cohesive thought that I had in that one moment. So

(01:55:58):
when we come back here we're going to take our break,
I want to get your thoughts on that, Liz, you know,
and see if it's related. Okay, great, okay, all right,
so we'll go find out what she thinks when we
come back here.

Speaker 12 (01:56:09):
Don't go away.

Speaker 2 (01:57:00):
To La.

Speaker 1 (01:57:21):
Fla tola, but not to exact fast Sassasa uses Sassacuss.

Speaker 6 (02:04:29):
Supers.

Speaker 3 (02:05:11):
Welcome back everyone to the third and final hour of
Vestiges after Dark. We've been having a wonderfully engaging conversation
tonight with our guest, Elizabeth Anton. He can call her Liz,
she says, and it's been I mean, I'm finding her
insights fascinating. And I left the break right before the

(02:05:32):
break we left off with talking about my experience I've
talked about in this show before, with that out of
body experience, with you know, experiencing the intrinsic essence of
music and then suddenly being able to perform at a
master's level and then losing it, you know, And I'm
curious what her thoughts are on that. So we're going

(02:05:52):
to find out here in a moment. And if you
have questions or stories for your for the guests tonight,
you can call into the show if you want. That's
two seven five four four eighty three. It's two o
seven five four four nineteen eighty three, or as most
of you seem to prefer, you can just log your
questions into the chatrooms across the internet wherever the show
is playing, and our moderators will bring it to our attention.

(02:06:15):
Any questions, comments, stories, anything you'd like to tell or
get our guests insight on, I'm sure Liz will be
happy to answer them. Okay, we'll be right back in
just a moment. Don't go anywhere, okay, Liz, I am

(02:07:43):
all ears. I can't wait to hear what you think
of that. I'm curious to do how it relates to
anything that you have uncovered in your research about this
type of phenomenon.

Speaker 10 (02:07:53):
Oh my god.

Speaker 7 (02:07:53):
Okay, Well, first of all, near death, I mean sorry,
out of body experiences are a fairly common thing, not
common common, but others have had them and it's similar.
So what I think it goes down to a bit is,
you know, if our consciousness is not created by a brain,
and it seems to be some way it's outside our

(02:08:17):
body the source of it, and it entangles with the brain,
So that would make sense, like you could go experience
and connect into where your consciousness is focused there instead
of inside your body, like normally you're just focused on
the consciousness that's entangled within your body. So I think

(02:08:39):
it ties in. I mean, it makes sense. And then
so much of your story was similar to what other
people who have near death experiences and out of body
experiences experience, you know, I mean the vibrations, Like I've
been trying to have out of body experiences and I've

(02:08:59):
had that with the vibrations and a little bit of
the rushing buzzing. But then it's like they say, then
suddenly that's right before you go out of body in
it like those next level and you get out of body,
and I just think that's it's consistent. And I think
the whole addition that you're having all those other you know,

(02:09:24):
getting to visit the music, getting to see all that,
it's just it's it ties in with all the other
research that consciousness is not created by a brain but
downloaded by it, and it's ties them near death experiences,
it ties in with the mediumship, It ties.

Speaker 3 (02:09:39):
In with all of that. Well, it would definitely make
sense because I mean you think about like I used
to work with traumatic brain injury.

Speaker 7 (02:09:47):
Oh I didn't know that.

Speaker 3 (02:09:48):
Okay, yeah, back before I did religious stuff, you know,
before I did all this, But I used to be
I used to work in clinical work and some of
my clients on my on my caseload work or traumatic
brain injury, and it was interesting because some were very
low functioning. Somewhere higher functioning, but I mean you could
see that it was again, the best way I could

(02:10:10):
describe it was like an antenna that wasn't picking up
the full signal. It was like something was wrong with
their equipment and they could still tune in a little bit,
but not to the degree that they could before the accident.
That caused the injury. So it was like it was
there but not able to manifest clearly. Again, like static

(02:10:35):
or trying to pick up a signal on the old
TVs with antennas, you know, or trying to tune into
a radio station but you're not you know, it's too
far away, so you're just not getting the whole signal.

Speaker 5 (02:10:45):
It was a lot like that.

Speaker 3 (02:10:46):
So it's made me wonder, you know, well it's drawn.
It brought me to the conclusion, even outside of esoteric research,
which is a whole other matter, that sort of confirms
a lot of what you're saying here tonight, and this
is well, is that that there, that there is a
fundamental property awareness in the universe that seems to contain everything. Now,

(02:11:08):
for me, I I do call that God because I
think that is what God is. I don't need I
don't know what your definition of God is when you
say that you don't believe in God, because if you're
if you're if you think of him as like some
guide that's out there creating things, I agree with you.

Speaker 5 (02:11:21):
I don't think that exists either.

Speaker 3 (02:11:23):
I think that there's a much deeper, more universal principle
at work that the best word we got for it
in religion is God, because there really isn't a word.

Speaker 5 (02:11:34):
For it, but it is a source. I mean, you know,
the problem is is that images of God are I mean,
every theologian on earth would say this, images of God
are entirely restricted by the human limitation of capacity to imagine,
and so any any any any image of God created

(02:11:59):
by the human mind is by definition insufficient, which is
why you know, I'm much more persuaded by sort of
you know, Acquineus Augustine's arguments of you know, the uncaused cause.
You know, if there is a consciousness that our brains
are transmitting or receiving, you know, there's an ultimate consciousness

(02:12:22):
if there if you know the fact that there is
something instead of nothing, you know, I mean materialistic atheistic scientismists,
they they don't not believe in miracles. They just believe
in one miracle that something was created, and we don't
really need to worry about how or why or who
was the uncaused cause of that creation. So you know,

(02:12:44):
my my consequently, my images of God. I mean, I
believe the revelation of God in the scriptures. I mean,
that's that's why I'm a Christian. But you know, the
image of what we would say is God the Father
or the Hebrew God or whatever people you know, and
cause cause I would never rely on on an image
from my mind as to how to conceive of that,

(02:13:07):
which is why. And I think on this show that's
our approaches can can seem much in a sense too
open minded to two very sort of biblical you know,
religion is because and and it's also simple saying I
don't want to I don't want to blow apart their paradigms.
I mean, if they've got a meaningful life and there

(02:13:27):
and they love God, great, you know, but but there
is Yeah, I'm just trying to kind of tap into that.

Speaker 10 (02:13:35):
Well.

Speaker 3 (02:13:35):
I think there's two very different types of materialists, two different,
very different types of atheists, and one I'm very hard
on one I actually kind of find myself agreeing with. Now, Liz,
You're you're kind of more of the the the latter
of those two, because I see what you're sharing is
more of an an honest, observational insight into things, and
you acknowledge the mystery that is before us. There are

(02:13:58):
other kinds of material as atheists who seem to actually
go out of their way to try to reject those
things on the basis that it's lights out, there's nothing
going on, you know, it's all just you know, it's
all a bunch of bullshit.

Speaker 5 (02:14:11):
It's a mindset. Yes, your mindset is what is essentially
close minded, right, Yes, and it lacks humility and honestly,
ironically is unscientific.

Speaker 4 (02:14:22):
It is.

Speaker 3 (02:14:23):
And honestly, I would say, as a Christian myself and
a person of faith, my worldview aligns far closer to yours, Liz,
than it would to a conventional Christian because I don't
accept that their notions of God. I see that actually
as probably what the Bible's really referring to it and
talks about idolatry. It's trying to create God in your

(02:14:44):
own image instead of trying to understand what is this
thing we call reality?

Speaker 5 (02:14:49):
What is our place with? Yes, you know, I mean,
no matter how much we have confidence in the scriptures
and what the Church teaches about about God's will for humanity,
only it only really teaches us about God's wills for humanity.
We can't by again, by definition, we can never ever
know the mind of God in this entirety, because in

(02:15:11):
order to be able to do that, we have to
be God, which is why monotheism is the only philosophically
coherent position to take again, not just in my opinion,
in the opinion of lots of people. And therefore, you know,
even for those sort of Bible belt Protestant Christians, I
don't want to mess with your with your paradigm too much,

(02:15:34):
you know, because I think it will lead to salvation.
So I'm not I'm not worried about you, you know.
I know you're worried about me, but I'm not worried
about you. But the's and I love you too, like
you know. So you know, if it's too if it

(02:15:55):
blows your mind too much to conceive of the fact
that God is simultaneously imminent and present to us and
simultaneously totally unknowable. See, that's the Catholic faith, that's the
Orthodox faith, imminent and unknowable. And really what we do

(02:16:15):
is we're surfing the wave, the liminal space between the two.

Speaker 3 (02:16:21):
I think so because what you're describing, Liz, in the
experiences that you've research sounds to me very much like
an unknowable foundational essence that sort of is connected and
interconnected into all things, And I don't want to sound
too star wars e with the force, but in some

(02:16:43):
ways there seems to be I think, an agreement that
you're recognizing that there is something that is connected here. Now,
whether or not we want to consider that a being
or an individual, I would argue that it's not. I
would say that you're right, we're not dealing with a being.

(02:17:04):
We might call God a being because it makes it
easier to understand, but that's so insufficient. I think we
could also say God is a you know, we can't
really say God is a creator, even though that's the
theologically correct terminology, because I think that it's manifesting in

(02:17:24):
a sense that it has always been. Perhaps the reason
why we can't find a first cause is because there
isn't one. Maybe there it doesn't need to be when
perhaps the time is the illusion and that everything is
has always just been and we're just coming into it
in moments because the way our brain works, because we

(02:17:47):
ourselves have an origin point and a seemingly endpoint as
far as this particular identity goes, and so we apply
that and the way we do everything, we make God
in our own image. Why don't we make time in
our own Imam.

Speaker 5 (02:18:00):
But we think we're so important. I mean, obviously, you know,
the way that God has chosen to create us and
love us is of ultimate importance to us. But it's
that doesn't mean it's of ultimate importance. So we we
call God the Father in the in the in the

(02:18:21):
trinity God, the Father is uncreated. So the Father is uncreated.
We talk about the uncreated light, and that's getting it
that kind of transcendence that we can never It would
be heretical to suppose we could pretend to understand.

Speaker 3 (02:18:37):
Yeah, which is basically the foundation everything.

Speaker 5 (02:18:40):
Some common ground.

Speaker 3 (02:18:41):
Common ground, but it's also the foundation of everything Buddhist,
because that's the reason.

Speaker 5 (02:18:45):
Why people materialistic.

Speaker 3 (02:18:47):
They'll accuse Buddhism is of being an atheist religion because
they don't have any gods of importance. They don't deny
the existence of gods, they just say they're not meaningful.
They just see them as more distractions to get in
your way to on the way to enlightenment that you
don't need them. Yeah, it is interesting because it could
align with some of those beings that you say that
some people report encountering. So there seems to be different

(02:19:11):
levels of perhaps this awareness and perhaps different beings at
different stages of functionality there. But I don't want to.
I don't want to monopolize the conversation. I want to
give some chance for our audience and for others. So, Brandon,
I know that you said you had some questions there.
I don't know if there's any from the audience or
if you've got some of your own. Jamie probably does too,

(02:19:32):
So Brandon, why don't you take the next one?

Speaker 8 (02:19:35):
So when you wrote this book, who do you help
reads it? And who do you think needs to read it?

Speaker 7 (02:19:47):
I hope grieving people or I mean of actually all
of us are going to face grief. So I'm hoping
people who really dismiss any thing like an after life
would read it and dismiss it because they think there's
no logical reason. You know, they think it's either only

(02:20:09):
religion or they think it's only very like you know,
for lack of better word, WU like, you know, they're
religious people or spiritual people speak about this in a
very just believe have faith like that. There's not anyone
who would enjoy not to disrespect faith. I'm sorry, I
know some I mean, you know, but but who would

(02:20:31):
be interested in seeing that there's actually non faith based, tangible,
factual reasons to think there could be an afterlife for
just that our consciousness works differently. So not only people
you know facing you know, grief, but also people are
very curious. And I really write it.

Speaker 6 (02:20:52):
In a very.

Speaker 7 (02:20:54):
I try to be very like conversational, very late, very fun,
very like you're sitting and having a coffee with me,
and just explain it very kind of as I started
to learn it, you know, And I try to use
very direct language, you know, as not language that's like
too spiritual or too esoteric.

Speaker 5 (02:21:14):
So because the reasoning I ask is here.

Speaker 8 (02:21:17):
Recently, I had published a book of my own where
I go into like the history and the evolution of
Satan throughout first and ble Judaism and whatnot.

Speaker 5 (02:21:27):
And my goal was.

Speaker 8 (02:21:30):
I grew up Southern Baptist Protestant for twenty three years,
and I grew up fearing the devil, had the trauma
of the devil.

Speaker 13 (02:21:39):
So my goal was to help people overcome that trauma.
And I hope that by reading it people were able
to do that. And so I know that with your book,
you have you have like a mission with your book
to accomplish, and so that's why I asked that question.

Speaker 7 (02:21:57):
Yeah, well, thanks for asking, and your books sounds really
like it would really be important for a set of
people too.

Speaker 8 (02:22:04):
You know, it's just not popular around here.

Speaker 7 (02:22:08):
No, no, you're working on that SEO and Instagram TikTok
book talk.

Speaker 3 (02:22:18):
Tennessee can be a little rough with this kind of
subject matter, to be honest. I mean, Georgia is pretty
rough too, but not as bad as Tennessee.

Speaker 5 (02:22:26):
Your whole country is completely impenetrable to the Western mind.

Speaker 7 (02:22:30):
To everybody else, it's impowrable to me.

Speaker 2 (02:22:34):
I don't know.

Speaker 7 (02:22:35):
I'm a New Yorker though, like religion is not part
of my life at all.

Speaker 5 (02:22:39):
Well, I've been intrigued by the sort of New Yorker
atheist and yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean because you know,
I grew up in Manchester, and Manchester is a very
Jewish place too, I mean, as far as England goes.
I mean, obviously, England, like most European countries, did their

(02:23:02):
best to kick all the Jews out in the terrible
awful times. But there's lots of Jews in Manchester, but
they tend to be I guess some are reform but
most would be fairly orthodox Jews, and so, but the
kind of the atheist Jew therefore, in my mind, which
is completely wrong, but the Jew I associate with New York.

Speaker 6 (02:23:27):
I don't think.

Speaker 7 (02:23:33):
Los Angeles.

Speaker 5 (02:23:34):
So I'm covering, yeah.

Speaker 6 (02:23:38):
But I think.

Speaker 5 (02:23:40):
So I woulder whether you know, my questions around the
sort of because if you come from an an atheistic
it's like the old joke in Northern Ireland, you know,
because they're obsessed whether you're a Catholic or Protestant in
Northern Ireland and they'll say, you know, are you a
cthogical approtiant that they say, well, I'm a Jew, And
we'll say, yeah, but you're a Catholic Jew or Protestant Jews. Yes,

(02:24:04):
But I do I do think, like from what i've
you know, friends of mine and listening to media christ
there are Christian atheists and Jewish atheists in America, you know,
And I actually do think that the Jewish atheism, by
by just throwing atheists into the same basket, is flawed.

(02:24:28):
Actually I think that, you know, as a theologian, i'd say, well,
I'd really want to kind of unpick the Judaism first,
and because there are differences between Judaism and Christianity. I
mean not just the obvious one, but the you know,
in terms of we talked about Judeo Christian philosophy, but

(02:24:49):
actually there is there are key differences between Christian and
Jewish ways of thinking, you know, theologically speaking, philosophically speaking.
Don't get me wrong, This way more in common than
any other two groups of people. And I'm very I'm
instinctively pro due, just so you know. But the the

(02:25:10):
but I wonder whether whether did do you see how
coming from a Jewish background might give you a different
way of looking at these things than if somebody was
an atheist from a Christian or you know, non aligned background.
I don't know, you know, I mean you look at

(02:25:33):
how Jews deal with death like condition, you know, all
that sort of thing worse you know.

Speaker 7 (02:25:38):
Well, I just think there's two different interpretations, two different
ways of being a Jew. It's either a culture or
it's a religion, and to me, it's a culture. I
don't really know much about the religion, you know, I
know that I get it, like burning the Red Sea,
but like in terms of death, I mean, we didn't
do any of the Jewish traditions. For my dad at all.

(02:26:00):
I mean I kind of know them, but yeah, I
mean like covering the mirrors or you know, sitting shiva,
but yeah, I just I don't identify with it as
a religion. And I mean my mom was raised Christian
but like secular Christian too, so I celebrated all the holidays,
but I was very embedded in Judaism as a culture,

(02:26:22):
so I was strongly in my life and the stuff
related to more of the Christian culture was not really
part of my upbringing. So I have no idea. I mean,
i'd be interested.

Speaker 5 (02:26:35):
As a far's they're not so concerned with what happens
after death. Like if you talk to an Orthodoxy, you well,
you know, yeah, we returned to be with God. But
it's like it's almost like, so what I just wondered, how,
how you know how whether that kind of feeds into it.

Speaker 3 (02:26:58):
Well, that's an interesting point because Jewish afterlife is a
complex matter, and it definitely shifted dramatically over the years.
Like when you go to the time of Christ, you're
starting to get into these apocalypticism concepts of resurrection of
the body, that kind of thing. But prior to that,

(02:27:19):
it was largely just shale right, you're blessed by God
in life if you're a good person, and you know
you but no matter how great you are, how horrible
you are, everyone just ends up in shale, which is
this drifting into this unconscious sleep like state until there's
pretty much nothing. It's kind of an annihilationism in a sense,

(02:27:43):
you could say. But then that sort of shifted. And
then in the Middle Ages, with Kabbalah and other Jewish
mystical pursuits, concepts of the afterlife started to develop into
more sophisticated forms where now you did have Jewish people
saying that there was you know, didn't have to end
up in shale, there was, there was other options in

(02:28:05):
the afterlife. And most the Jews I know today, whether
they be practicing or nonpracticing, whether they be completely sexual, secular,
sex not sexual, secular, they are sexual, yeah, secular secular
or uh, you know, materialists, or or they are have
some kind of belief in God maybe sometimes it's usually

(02:28:27):
in between. They like believe in God, but they're not
really practicing anything that much. But all of them kind
of seem to believe in life after death. I have
not met one that did it, not not yet. Uh,
and that was the whole spectrum from people that more
would identify more with your views on on on, you know,
more scientific, more rational thought versus the more orthodox. You know,

(02:28:53):
there is just a consistent belief and ghosts are a
big thing. So my curious, I'm curious, do you believe
in ghosts and the paranormal and things of that nature.

Speaker 7 (02:29:04):
Well, yeah, but the Jews I knew did not believe
in that stuff. It was interesting. Yeah, it's interesting, you
know when I you know, it's interesting because we just
maybe some did. It was just totally irrelevant, like anything
like God or religion. I actually don't even know what
my friends believed growing up or my culture, because we never.

Speaker 5 (02:29:25):
Where you're from.

Speaker 3 (02:29:26):
It might be where you're race, or the fact that
they know I'm a bishop, so maybe they think they
need to talk about it.

Speaker 5 (02:29:31):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (02:29:32):
It could be something too.

Speaker 7 (02:29:33):
You know, some maybe did think more there was an
afterlife than I really was, because once I started doing this.
I mean some might also be a little generational, like
a lot of the older generations, like my parents' generation,
are like, oh this is absolutely nuts, unscientific, And I
noticed like millennial and younger, they're a little more like, oh,
I always thought, you know, I mean, I think, but yeah,

(02:29:57):
I don't really you know, a camp we once tried
to play with like a Ouiji board and thought it
might work. But you know, I mean just the way
sort of kids. I don't think that went into anything
to Judaism. It was just so irrelevant. I would almost say,
I think there's very different types of atheists in the
sense there's the ones identify as an atheist, and those

(02:30:18):
tend to be people who have a backlash against a
very religious upbringing, and then there are there those that
like me, like it's not really part of my identity.
I never even used to say it was an atheist
till I started doing all this. It was just the default.
I was like, oh, I'm Jewish, you know, I say
I have Jewish half Christian, or I say I'm Jewish,
but like I never associated that with like actually believing

(02:30:38):
in God as much as like, you know, I celebrate
the holidays, and so it was just I was just
in such a secular culture that it was like irrelevant
that I'm an atheist. Yeah, So it was like I
just never believed in a god. That was just started
the default about everything I was around, so I didn't
really start using that word until I started writing and

(02:31:01):
talking about all this because I was like, well, I
don't believe in the God. That makes me atheist.

Speaker 4 (02:31:06):
So I think it people have to have labels. That
people got to You have to peck a label, even
though you don't want to label yourself people, right, No,
you have to have a label. I'm sorry, Yeah, yeah,
I get it.

Speaker 7 (02:31:17):
I think it like has a lot of it's strong,
and I want to reach people in grief. So even
if someone believes in God and they're like, oh my God,
this girl's an atheist and she thinks there's an afterlife,
I think, you know, because of religious someone is if
like you know, the worst happens, especially like if they
lose a child, you know, I think they sometimes, from

(02:31:38):
what I've noticed with this work, will even turn to
other things. Sometimes their religion isn't enough. So I like
it because I think it gives like maybe more strength.

Speaker 3 (02:31:50):
There's something brilliant about that, because I mean, think about
how how much more credible that is, because you can't
write it off as being one. She's just she's just
influenced by her faith. Like if I talk about the afterlife.
People are just going to dismiss me who don't believe
in it. They're just going to dismiss me on the
basis that he's a bishop. Of course he's going to

(02:32:11):
say that. But it no, well, I mean, what they
should do is always another.

Speaker 5 (02:32:16):
Question, secular argument. But it's a secular argument. You would
say that because no, I'm a Christian, so I say.

Speaker 3 (02:32:22):
That, Well you couldn't. You could say that too.

Speaker 5 (02:32:25):
At some point you make a decision and things knit
together in your mind and you you know, you go
down a certain path, right, But.

Speaker 3 (02:32:32):
I mean, I think there's something there is something though
more unique in the sense of somebody who does take
an atheist identification, regardless of how specific that is, because
I mean, like I said, I actually find myself agreeing
with most of the things you said, so and I
don't consider myself atheist, so I think, but there's definitely

(02:32:53):
more common ground than it might appear. But outside of that,
be that as it may.

Speaker 5 (02:32:58):
Just the fact that you.

Speaker 3 (02:33:00):
People might say that my theism and your atheism are biases,
and that that's going to influence how we look at afterlife,
and so naturally a theist bias is going to be
you know, of course there's an afterlife, but an atheist
bias saying no, there's an afterlight. Now it gets interesting
because the expectation is that why would you believe in that?

(02:33:23):
If you're an atheist, you know that would be the
next step. So I think it gives some credibility to
your research on the basis that you're not being influenced
by what you want to believe as much as what
you're observing objectively, If that makes sense.

Speaker 7 (02:33:36):
I mean, I want to believe this. I don't want
to die. I don't want my loved ones to die.
I want to believe it as much as any religious person.
But I hope because like.

Speaker 5 (02:33:46):
Death.

Speaker 3 (02:33:48):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we got a question for you.

Speaker 5 (02:33:51):
Lizen.

Speaker 3 (02:33:52):
The in the chat top g asks what I never
understood is how do atheists know that there's nothing after death?

Speaker 5 (02:33:59):
Have they?

Speaker 3 (02:34:00):
I'd explored nothingness and have returned to explain it to us.

Speaker 10 (02:34:02):
All.

Speaker 3 (02:34:03):
Well, I think that's exactly what Liz is talking about,
is that there isn't a correlation there.

Speaker 5 (02:34:08):
You want to you want to take it.

Speaker 7 (02:34:12):
Saist, I means I don't think there's a god. I
think saying there's a god and then the religion. I mean,
that's just a huge, huge, huge interpretation. I think the
burden of proof, the burden of proof is to show
the invisible and the you know, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

(02:34:32):
Even if it's culturally normal in a lot of circles,
it's still an absolutely extraordinary claim to say there's a
God and there's a heaven and you know, and some
of the stories in the Bible are torah like being
true like that I think requires a remarkable burden of proof.
And I have not seen any burden of proof of that.

(02:34:53):
I've seen burden of proof, burden of preponderance of evidence.
I'll put it that way, that our consciousness is not
created by a brain. So I mean, I I feel
like it's not on us to prove there isn't a god,
because I mean, why not put it on us? And

(02:35:14):
I hope that this is coming off is disrespectful faith,
it's wonderful. Okay, we're.

Speaker 6 (02:35:20):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (02:35:21):
And I can't speak for the entire audience, but as
far as this panel, you're good, Okay, Yeah, it's fine.

Speaker 6 (02:35:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (02:35:29):
I think there's a big pink floating elephant and two
solar systems over prove to me, there isn't.

Speaker 6 (02:35:36):
You know what I mean.

Speaker 7 (02:35:37):
It's like if I think that it's kind of need
to prove so I feel well even again, if culturally normal,
I still think the concept of a god is one
of the most extraordinary claims there is. I also think
saying that there's an afterlife one of the most extraordinary claims,
which is why I keep wanting to gather more and
more and more evidence. I still your data.

Speaker 4 (02:35:58):
I'm sure you're familiar with the Acashak record when your research.
Do you see any correlation between that theory and what
you've been finding? You know, like this huge cosmic library
of everything's ever, everything that's ever happened, all the knowledge
there is.

Speaker 7 (02:36:13):
I do, and I have an interesting correlation about what
I think. I think just a little bit. I don't
know exactly what it is, but yeah, I think there
seems to be something like that. And part of that
is not just this research, but also physics, everything that's
been in our light waves. Like so let's say we
there's like a planet however many light years away, and

(02:36:35):
they have telescopes are able to look at Earth. They're
going to be looking at dinosaurs if they're in a
certain area they might distance, they might be looking at
before dinosaurs. That means everything that's ever happened is stored already,
at least in this iteration of the Big Bang, which
so far I think is the best explanation. That's already
stored in there sound waves. Everything is going out and stored.

(02:36:59):
You know, we've managed to break this sound barrier and
able to hear sounds from the past. I would pose
it like already these light these stuff is like you know,
traveling in light waves. That we see our eyes in
this type of body, in this dimension, in this form
of consciousness, our eyes make us able to see things

(02:37:21):
like color and sight. You know, I would, but we're
not like colors aren't real in that sense. It's the
play of light on an object. I will posit not
that consciousness is a type of wave just like that
that goes into our brains the same way. I don't
understand it enough, And so I think that the same
way that light is all this information, the visual information

(02:37:45):
is traveling. You know, from the beginning of people say
the beginning of time, but I'll say the beginning of
the iteration of this universe. It's traveling, and it's all
out there, and the information's all out there. If we
could travel past the speed of light, we could see
something that happen and fifty thousand years ago and just
watch it in front of us. And I think consciousness
that and I think that would somehow all of that

(02:38:06):
together with light, sound, all this information what's happened is stored.
And I think consciousness is stored in that too, which
is all of our experiences.

Speaker 3 (02:38:14):
Yeah, there's a little bit of a discussion going on
in the chat about you know, the Yeah, it is
going so fast, I can barely keep up with that.
But it was back on the complique. Yeah, you're definitely
making people think tonight, that's what we were here for.

Speaker 5 (02:38:27):
Yeah, I do too.

Speaker 6 (02:38:28):
I do.

Speaker 5 (02:38:28):
I love it when I see it.

Speaker 3 (02:38:30):
You know, top G responded to your your answer to
his question or his or her question. It's just as
an extraordinary claim from the atheist to say there is
no God from the vantage point.

Speaker 5 (02:38:44):
Of the theist.

Speaker 3 (02:38:46):
I guess what I'd like to to say in response
to that. And this would be a kind of an
interesting thing I'd like to hear from, because you use
some interesting terminology. They use legal terminology, and in at
least in the United States of America. Our legal system
is based that the burden approof is unfortunately on the

(02:39:06):
person making the claim. So if you accuse somebody of
doing something, you've got to be able to prove it
beyond a reasonable doubt that it happened. So my question is,
I think you would say that if we were putting
a person on trial and accusing them of believing in God,
could there could they could the could the legal team

(02:39:30):
uh be able to come up with enough evidence to
prove it in a court of law that He does
indeed exist. I think your answer to that would be no.
But I think you would say it sounds like to
me that you'd say yes to the afterlife. So what
what do you I guess you kind of cut touched
on it, but I want to be more clear. What

(02:39:51):
is it about your afterlife research that puts it more
into the credible range for you to say, yeah, this
is where it's going versus God? Because I think a
lot of people and I'm singing in the in the
in the chat, a lot of people just equate them
as is the same thing. If you if you believe
in God, you believe in the afterlife. If you believe
in the afterlife. You believe in God, and that's not
necessarily true, as we've seen here tonight. So I'm curious,

(02:40:14):
what is it. What is the absolute evidence in your
research for that that proves the afterlife to you that
you're not getting from I guess believe in God.

Speaker 7 (02:40:28):
Okay, this is going to be a long answer.

Speaker 5 (02:40:29):
I'll do the best, take all the time.

Speaker 7 (02:40:31):
Eliminate the word proof. We do not have proof there's
an after life. I think it is the most reasonable
conclusion based on the evidence that we have. There's a
promus evidence. I think it's the most likely conclusion. There
is not proof.

Speaker 5 (02:40:44):
Unfortunately, so in court they'd have to throw it out.

Speaker 7 (02:40:50):
No, because there's no court case that says one hundred
absolute proof. Otherwise there wouldn't you wouldn't be able to,
you know, have evidence re examined. You know, there's there's
there's problems. There wouldn't be the appeals process.

Speaker 2 (02:41:07):
Yeah, it would be.

Speaker 7 (02:41:10):
There's already like, no court case could have one hundred
percent proof because even if someone is like I saw
this person murder this person, and here's all the video
of it, and ten of us got this on their phones, Well,
how do you know, they don't have a secret identical
twin that their parents never told them about that went
and committed the murder. There's always the more outmost outrageous

(02:41:33):
claim that makes the concept of proof almost impossible. So
that is why you know in courts they'll say we
need civil cases I believe it's beyond a reasonable doubt,
and criminal court it's a preponderance of evidence.

Speaker 5 (02:41:49):
They do not criminal courts beyond a reasonable doubt.

Speaker 7 (02:41:56):
That's higher. I thought the others wound it higher.

Speaker 5 (02:42:00):
Civil civil is on the balance of probabilities, so so
the criminal necessarily so because at a criminal court you
can lose your freedom. So beyond I.

Speaker 7 (02:42:14):
Knew it was higher. I just thought preponderance of evidence
sounded higher than beyond a reasonable was was.

Speaker 5 (02:42:21):
Is actually not? It was It was invented by the
Supreme Court in the roe versus Wade decision, which was
and even people who supported the outcome, like Ruth Bede
Ginsburg admitted that that was an absurd, absurd legal thing
to say. But in the civil court.

Speaker 6 (02:42:44):
Makeup the.

Speaker 7 (02:42:49):
I love Ruth bad Aginstburg.

Speaker 6 (02:42:50):
So she thought that was.

Speaker 5 (02:42:53):
She actually she actually thought that the although she approved
the ro versus way the outcome. She actually is on
the record of saying that the legal judgment was.

Speaker 7 (02:43:04):
Where they got there, the law was about that specifically. No, Actually,
I know a lot about this because it's it's I've
been devastated about what's been going on in this country.

Speaker 5 (02:43:15):
I mean, you know, we all are. Again, it's a
failure of the legislature because they're asking the court to
do you watch it.

Speaker 7 (02:43:25):
Yeah, she was concerned it happened. She was concerned exactly
what would happen with Dobbs. But yeah, okay, yeah, I
thought you just meant the whole Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 5 (02:43:36):
But in terms of court, yes, yeah, No, a new civil.

Speaker 7 (02:43:41):
Court was a lower burden. I just thought that preponderance
of evidence sounded stronger than beyond a reasonable doubt.

Speaker 5 (02:43:47):
I dont know. Okay, that's just hard as hard to
top proved beyond reasonable doubt, that's for sure.

Speaker 7 (02:43:54):
Yeah, I guess you're right.

Speaker 5 (02:43:55):
Yeah, because because it should be waited, it's waited in
favor of the defendant. Right. The whole idea is that
we don't want innocent people being found guilty.

Speaker 7 (02:44:06):
Yeah that makes sense.

Speaker 5 (02:44:07):
Yeah, that does make sense.

Speaker 7 (02:44:08):
It makes at sense.

Speaker 3 (02:44:10):
So apply those rules to those I mean, that's that's
kind of the no proof.

Speaker 7 (02:44:15):
There's no proof of an afterlife, and I don't think
it's ever going to be possible to prove unless we're
most likely, unless we're actually there that we could talk
about that too and question that. So that being said,
it's multiple things. When it all comes together, it's mediums
communicating with in evidential ways where there are no stuff

(02:44:37):
they could not have known that I've seen. It's mediums
passing up to quintuple blinded studies. They are studies where
it even eliminates that they're reading your mind. And I've
had experiences where they can't have been reading my mind
because they knew stuff that I said was wrong that
I found out was true. There is, it's just so

(02:44:59):
many things. There's near dea experiences, there's out of body experiences.
There's so many thing thing sorry, that's pickles saying hello.
There's so much. It seems to show that consciousness operates
not created by a brain. You know, there's all the
research adopts from you know, reincarnation, just so so so much.

(02:45:26):
And so when you put you know, you mentioned ghosts
out love the word ghosts, but yeah, people will see
you know, for example, crisis apparitions, someone will come to
them right before they pass away and tell them, and
then the person will find out they passed away, you know,
deathbed visions on hospice.

Speaker 6 (02:45:43):
Like.

Speaker 7 (02:45:43):
When you put all this together, the logical conclusion, first
of all, is that our conscient our brains aren't working
the way we think they are. They don't seem to
be working materially. That I would almost say there's proof
of I would come close to saying there's proof, very
close to proof, And there is proof that there's some

(02:46:05):
other law physics and consciousness that we don't understand because
there's constant experience after experience challenging the completely materialist paradigm.
So then you take you to the next level. It
seems that our consciousness operates outside of a brain in
some way. That's the most logical conclusion. If it operates
outside of a brain, that means it's not dependent on

(02:46:27):
a body to exist. So a higher logical is that
that means when our body is dead, our consciousness continues.
And that's what near death experiencers. They're the only ones
around us who've actually experienced it. Yeah, I'm saying ninety
nine point nine percent of you near death experienced people
will say that they no longer fear death and they're

(02:46:49):
convinced there's an afterlife.

Speaker 4 (02:46:51):
Yeah, I don't fear death anymore. And I can tell
you what when I was, when my consciousness was detached
from my body, it was just you didn't feel anchored
to anything, but yet you felt a part of everything.
It was very, very odd sensation, like I didn't have
a body and I really didn't care, but I knew
that I was still there wherever there was. It was

(02:47:14):
just it was blackness, and then it wasn't until and
then the negative part happened, and then that was a
whole nother That was a whole other thing. But yeah,
it's I don't fear death anymore.

Speaker 3 (02:47:27):
I'm curious, Liz, with proof, the subject of proof, if
I can get back on that for just a moment.

Speaker 7 (02:47:36):
Oh, sorry, do you want me just to finish why
there's then no God? But then it's jumping to a
huge conclusion ten steps on the line to say there's
a God nowhere in this does it?

Speaker 3 (02:47:45):
But for me, though, I mean, let's just stick to
the afterlife for the moment. We can get to God
if you want to But for me, I'm curious because
in the Christian worldview, I can say, well, my question,
let me give me a question and then I'll explain
why I want. Your answer is that I can say,
I mean, the question is, why do you think proof

(02:48:06):
is so hard to come by in this?

Speaker 5 (02:48:09):
If it?

Speaker 3 (02:48:09):
If it, if it, if it is a definitive reality,
why is it so hard to prove?

Speaker 2 (02:48:14):
Then?

Speaker 3 (02:48:15):
Because in Christianity we have an answer for that. We
can say that the fallen world has distorted our connection
to the divine and therefore we do not see the
Divine clearly like we were originally intended or designed or
created to do. But these are all, of course provocative
terms to the atheist worldview. So from your vantage point, what,

(02:48:35):
how would you explain why it is so hard to
get the.

Speaker 5 (02:48:40):
Proof of the afterlife? Why is this so difficult?

Speaker 3 (02:48:43):
If it's if it's there, I have I can.

Speaker 7 (02:48:47):
Look at this from multiple ways, and I think there's
even they might sound contradictory, but there's a bit of
truth in all of them. Okay, Number one, it's not
that hard. We have so we have so so so
much of the evidence.

Speaker 6 (02:49:00):
It's just.

Speaker 7 (02:49:01):
A lot of it's dismissed because it hasn't been built
into Number two, we very well might just not be
there yet. There was a time where someone could say,
why would it be It would seem impossible to prove
that there's you know, other planets, you know, So it's
just our technology might just not be there yet. Number three,

(02:49:26):
you know, because it's not as easy to prove as
it is that you know, the mo you know that
there's the Moon and the Sun and the Solar system.
That's much easier to prove. It might just be almost physiological,
physiologically impossible to completely prove, based on the fact we're
in different dimensions, which means our bodies are aligned to

(02:49:51):
exactly experience time, moving in a certain way, to see
things in a certain way. Again, we see light that
bounces off things, that gives color. Maybe they're all these.

Speaker 5 (02:49:59):
Other and are limited by those senses, Yeah.

Speaker 7 (02:50:03):
Limited by them, And maybe there's ten other senses like that.
We can't even begin to understand.

Speaker 5 (02:50:09):
Infinite infinite numbers, an infinite number.

Speaker 7 (02:50:13):
Yeah, and there could be other beings right next to
me that are seeing those senses, you know what I mean?

Speaker 5 (02:50:19):
Well, and actually there are because when we develop microscopes
when we can see bacteriy, we realize that on our
very body. So so I'm quite content with all of that.
I mean, I think you know, I mean again to
bring it back to Catholic theology and without getting two
into the weeeze, you know, we believe that that Christ
is present, body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Eucharist,

(02:50:43):
but we don't believe that we're tasting flesh and blood,
you know. Now, you know, Aquinas has his explanation transstantiation
that don't need to get into it. But the idea
that the real idea is that is that we're transported
through time in space to that one perfect sacrifice that

(02:51:03):
requires a level of thought exactly like you're describing. You
know that there that there are realities that that we
actually can well, the Catholic claim would be that we
participate in that reality, but we we we don't how
that how that reality comes about is a mystery because
we can't. We can't haven't got the equipment to perceive

(02:51:27):
it or conceive of it. Right Why I think it's
so close to faith and what you're describing, it's so
close to faith. That's that's the differences.

Speaker 7 (02:51:36):
I completely changed my mind based on evidence. You know, interesting, Okay, okay,
but I'm basing.

Speaker 5 (02:51:46):
And by the way I did.

Speaker 3 (02:51:48):
Ironically, it's true because it's the interesting thing. And when
I say this is persuading arguments, We're just.

Speaker 5 (02:51:57):
I'm not badgering you. I'm really not.

Speaker 7 (02:51:59):
I don't think you are.

Speaker 3 (02:52:01):
Father Chris, Father Chris, and I have well. Father Chris
came from a non believing background, right and then, and
then it was actually experiential evidence that sort of persuaded
him to come.

Speaker 7 (02:52:15):
For me.

Speaker 3 (02:52:16):
It wasn't so much a lack of belief in God
that I never had a challenge with again from experiences,
but it was more so whether or not there could
ever be a religious practice that would be more beneficial
than any other. In my mind, it was more about

(02:52:36):
anyone I lived. I grew up in more of a
mindset that anyone is as good as any other. Uh,
They're all just trying to explain something that is largely unexplainable.
And I still largely do agree with that. But where
I changed, what changed me, and that was evidence that
changed me, is that there was something about the particular

(02:53:00):
path of Christianity that that it was different, even as
a Buddhist and in largely still a Buddhist. I mean,
I'll never be able to remove my Buddhism from me.
I wouldn't want to. But the reason I practiced Christianity
as my religion is because of evidence. So I did

(02:53:22):
change my mind, and father Chris changed his mind too.

Speaker 6 (02:53:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:53:27):
Yeah, And I think that was somewhat scientific. Maybe not
for the same reasons, but there was a sort of objective.

Speaker 5 (02:53:33):
That was more like a court trial. Yeah it was, yeah,
you know, of course it was. I was a policeman,
but you know, it was like, you know, The Day
Death Died was the book by Michael Green, and that's
not very complicated or difficult. But you know, I obviously
develops on that. But I'm more I'm persuaded by witness

(02:53:53):
testimony and particularly like like you said, there's a certain
there's a certain validity of saying, well, so when he's
an atheist saying this an afterlife, it is in a
sense that, you know, of a different qual I think
it's profound. But but but you know, in a similar way,
just as profound that the disciples of Jesus and more.

(02:54:13):
But let's focus on the disciples who all ran for
the Hills. Apart from Saint John the evangelist, all of
them ran away when he was arrested and crucified, you know,
and they and Peter denied he was a galileean or
knew anything about him. All of those men witnessed the
resurrection of Jesus Christ and went from being utter cowards

(02:54:35):
in the presence of Jesus to being willing to be
martyred rather than deny that they've seen him risen from
the dead. So that was my entry. It was so
in other words, I didn't want to base it on
some nebulous feeling I didn't need it, didn't need it
in my life. It was I wasn't going through some
trauma that I needed an answer to the traumas came after.

(02:54:58):
But but in other words, it was it was based
upon on a on a solid evidentiary principle that we
still believe today. You know, two witnesses will convict you
of a crime if they say you did it in court,
and there were multiple witnesses, and you really know, if
someone believes something, if they're willing to die for it,
you know, So that was my that was my point
of you know, okay, that seems rational. I can now

(02:55:21):
allow that to you know, I don't know something I
can I can have confidence of saying, well, let's suspend
my disbelief because now there's a reason to give some
credence I want to give you.

Speaker 3 (02:55:32):
I want to give you one one minute to answer
father Chris, but I also want to leave a minute
for you to be able to give the audience you
know any Yeah, and you need to come.

Speaker 2 (02:55:42):
Back, come back.

Speaker 7 (02:55:43):
This is so fun. I love it makes me really think.
I love it.

Speaker 5 (02:55:46):
Well, let's do it.

Speaker 3 (02:55:47):
Well, Brandon will definitely get you on for the next season.
I'd love to have you back and soon because there's
just too much to talk about here. But I don't
want to give it. I don't want to. You'd miss
a chance to tell everybody how they can find your
book and where you know, your website. It's anything else
you want them to know.

Speaker 5 (02:56:01):
So go ahead.

Speaker 7 (02:56:03):
Oh okay, can I just put the reply respond again?

Speaker 3 (02:56:06):
We got about a minute and a half, so you're good.

Speaker 5 (02:56:08):
Yeah, you're good.

Speaker 7 (02:56:09):
You're assuming the stories in the Bible are true. There's
multiple stories that get passed down through time, including ones
about Zeus, so I don't necessarily but I don't believe
the stories of the Bible are factually true.

Speaker 5 (02:56:25):
Of them all, Okay, you have to you have to
the library, but you have to accept that.

Speaker 3 (02:56:32):
You have to accept that on base of faith, because
for all we know, I mean, the apostles were were
were fictitious characters.

Speaker 6 (02:56:40):
They very well might.

Speaker 3 (02:56:41):
We don't have absolutely or I mean.

Speaker 7 (02:56:45):
We're like most stories passed down through time and translation.
There's probably a slight bit of truth, but just like
all others, you know, to be exaggerated.

Speaker 3 (02:56:54):
Sure, we need to pick this up, but real quick,
Lizic you could just say everything and.

Speaker 5 (02:57:00):
You want them to know.

Speaker 7 (02:57:01):
Yeah, these are my books. You want to start with
the first one you can find me. The first one
is called Wtf Just Happened? A Sciencey Skeptic explores grief,
healing and evidence of an afterlife. And then book two
you have to read them in a series perfectly. It
actually talks a little bit about a court case too,
so which is perfect with our conversation. Wtf just Happened?

(02:57:25):
A sciencey Skeptic investigates even more evidence of an afterlife
and fights for justice with.

Speaker 6 (02:57:30):
Her dad dog.

Speaker 7 (02:57:32):
My podcast all about the Wtf just Happened? All about
the afterlife. No will can find it. I'm on all well,
I'm not all social media, no Twitter, I'm a Instagram
TikTok spook mainly on Instagram TikTok, I'm as active and website.
Wtf just happened?

Speaker 5 (02:57:52):
Dot? So thank you so much.

Speaker 7 (02:57:55):
I'm going promo.

Speaker 3 (02:57:56):
Yeah, well, thank you so much.

Speaker 5 (02:57:59):
We will get you.

Speaker 3 (02:58:00):
You on, Brandon, make sure she's she's scheduled for next season,
Father Chris, thank you, Brandon, thank yes, thank you. It
was great. And you know, if you're out there in
the audience and just wondering what the fuck just happened,
well now you know. Okay, Jamie, thank you. And next
week we're going to be covering Taoism, okay with a
brand new guest again. So Taoism next week Tuesday at

(02:58:22):
eight pm Eastern Vestiges after dark. Make sure you don't
miss it. Okay, Until then, though, I will see you
out there in the ether. God bless everyone.

Speaker 10 (02:59:22):
Insist numberstlists is the busts.

Speaker 5 (02:59:31):
Is the rest is the best is the

Speaker 6 (02:59:37):
Is theists is the best is the best

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

The Joe Rogan Experience

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Exploring the Afterlife with Elizabeth Entin

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

The Joe Rogan Experience

All Episodes

Exploring the Afterlife with Elizabeth Entin

Stuff You Should Know