Catholic Priests Talk About Near Death Experiences | The Catholic Talk Show

hey everybody welcome back to another episode of the catholic talk show we have an awesome episode today we're going to be talking about near-death experiences yeah we're joined with father spitzer from the magistender and credible catholic to explore what happens when a person dies and comes back to life and what that experience is like i'm reminded of the prophet isaiah from chapter 25 something that we hear so often with respect to the liturgies of the funeral on this mountain he will destroy the veil that veils all peoples the web that is woven over all nations he will destroy death forever i hope that this veil is lifted and i am confident with father spitzer here we're going to have a very amazing conversation and see through that veil [Music] great well i'm really excited about this episode in particular because i had the honor and the blessing of hearing father spitzer uh uh share this uh study this this scientific study so beautifully at the napa institute conference a few years ago and for those of you don't know father spitzer he's a jesuit uh he's out in california i believe and um a man that literally exudes the glory of the cross as he is blind and he's wearing his shades you know because he's just an awesome dude and so we're real i'm just i'm i've been excited to have this conversation with you since we started emailing you father and i'm so excited for our audience too as well well thanks it's a real honor to be with you and uh i have to say uh yeah i'm definitely not the rock star priest just a blind guy [Laughter] you know and since we first started this this show this podcast uh it's always been really a desire of ours to have you on you were literally the first conversation that we ever had when conceiving doing the show we said how great it'd be to have father spitzer on because of how much we esteem your intellect and your uh the way that you talk and evangelize so really thank you so much for coming on father thank you yeah yeah we actually conceived this show at the napa conference so oh wow no kidding yeah two and a half years i believe in running uh all glory be to god oh great so let's start with uh a near-death experience like my uh my grandmother when she passed away when i was in college had all of her children around she had five children around her um and she went out in and out of this it was it was hospice she died of cancer um god rest her soul and and one of the most amazing experiences where she was in and out of consciousness with what i maybe believe would be heaven i mean he saw some of her favors she saw her horse i mean it was and then she'd come back and then she see her kids and i mean it was just this really glorious moment she reached her hands up to uh to the sky and just breathed her last it was a very beautiful moment for my family uh and something that obviously uh as a catholic as a christian i looked at in wonder amazement but also in curiosity and so as we begin this conversation about a near-death experience you're going to be sharing with us scientific information which is fascinating why don't we begin with um just the uh the output of what was studied and how uh near-death experiences in this study were classified before we begin speaking about some of the more of the details yeah what exactly is an nde right though um a near-death experience generally has two components your grandmother uh would not be precisely a near-death experience that's what's called a deathbed vision and uh there are many of them and my grandfather certainly had one um himself but a near-death experience occurs when clinical death occurs and clinical death occurs when you have a flat eeg that's a flat electroencephalogram that means there's no electrical activity detectable either in the cerebral or frontal cortex there might be a few sputterings of neurons electrically in the lower brain but at best that is it so the person is essentially called clinically dead because they cannot perform what we might call a thinking fun function so that would be like some kind of cognition that would happen memory that might happen recall that might happen nothing like that could happen because all those things take place in the cerebral cortex and if the brain is going to do it then the brain has to have electrical activity so we would say at that juncture there's no way the brain is doing the thinking and yet at the very moment when you have flat eeg fixed and dilated pupils no gag reflex meaning that the vast amount of electrical energy is not really coursing through even the lower brain at that point people say that a soul and i have no doubt that it's true because i have very good reasons that i'll explain in a moment but uh that people say yeah a sort of a spiritual body left my physical body so in other words um you know a soul-like uh um you know image right it's extended it feels like a body uh internally um and this person can see can hear can taste uh and not really taste but they can they can sense uh uh you know what's going on around them and not only that they can um actually recall all of their memories in fact their memory is more acute uh in their um clinically dead state um in the spiritual body than it is in their physical body and furthermore they can defy physical laws so this uh what i'm going to call spiritual body can go right through walls just like our lord right there it can go up and down so it can defy gravity physical laws have no effect on this person and so there's many many accounts of people who are reporting what's going on outside of the hospital so at this point we say that the person is not um obviously thinking or feeling recalling or remembering with their physical brain or physical body there has to be some other nexus of consciousness some other source of consciousness that is a more or less spiritual that is surviving their bodily death but nevertheless was a few moments ago continuous with the body but now it's existing living independently of the physical body and um why am i so convinced that this is in fact the case because first of all we have a lot of things called a lot of evidence called vertical data and vertical data means that you have an unusual occurrence that has been witnessed by somebody right when they were clinically dead when they're incapable of thinking seeing hearing processing of information through the physical brain right when this occurs they actually witness unusual events report it in 100 accurate detail which is far beyond anything that's done by witnesses in the court of law so that's one of the stipulations this has to be 100 accurate and furthermore uh was verified by independent researchers after the fact so for example on you know somebody will come in and say say to a patient who's just been resuscitated oh mr so-and-so we lost your dentures and the fellow who will say well no you didn't lose my dentures i can tell you exactly where they are the nurse with the red hair took the dentures out of my mouth just before you put the paddles on me to resuscitate me now she opened a drawer underneath the machine which looks like this and that was an or number eight she pulled out the drawer threw the dentures in closed the drawer and if you go back in or8 and you find that uh machine that looks like this just open the drawer my dentures will be there sure enough there they are so people go wow that that is extraordinary but it's not just that people will go outside of the hospital for example one lady uh just simply went right through the hospital walls um and she was kind of floating up there around the third floor of the hospital but looking she's outside the hospital floating up there near the third floor and she's looking back at the hospital and sees a sneaker probably of a construction worker who um was working on that building 20 years before and it had fallen on a ledge and it had a worn left toe and the shoelace was stuck underneath the heel there was very dirty very old and so she says you know that you can't see it from the outside but that tennis shoe i saw it from up above looking down on it and it's there on the third floor ledge so one of uh um one of the doctors who was investigating sent his researcher out on that ledge and sure enough there was the tennis shoe precisely as described so this kind of vertical data and by the way there's thousands upon thousands of cases of this kind of vertical data which is occurring when somebody is clinically dead incapable of seeing hearing you know uh um thinking recalling uh you know any cognition of any kind so can i stop you just one second absolutely i'm i'm i'm deeply curious about um the the the use of let's say for lack of a better term the will to to move the body is is this a free sort of experience where they're just taken somewhere or is this something that you know they they can recall maybe with this data that they moved in a particular direction themselves well they both cases both cases in some cases for example in the case of the lady that went through the um through the hospital walls and was kind of looking at the hospital from the outside uh you know she reported that you know she was interested in looking at what was going on out there and in another case when a guy went through the walls and for example uh went into the waiting room next door he was taken there uh he was actually just sort of taken there uh in the case of you might remember that book heaven is for real colton bufo that that um you know uh he was taken there so he he sees his mother and his father they're in two different rooms uh during his near-death experience and so he's hearing his father praying and sort of uh kind of you know kind of letting god have a little bit of what for he was a little bit angry and impatient and his mother is sitting there on the phone and he could even recollect parts of her conversation with her friends about what was going on and so um you know but again he was taken there so it seems to happen on both levels people go through the walls of the of the waiting room um and they didn't even know there was a waiting room there when they went through the wall but then you know there they find themselves and they hear their relatives but never speak badly of the dead uh because of course here's this guy listening to every single thing they're saying and um he can even report well you know you had my t-shirt on as a matter of fact in that waiting room etc etc so so um yeah but it goes both ways so there is a moment of will but there's also the dimension when you're taken in part two of the experience when you're taken to a heavenly domain or not so heavenly domain that part you do not will yourself to in that case when you go to that part two of the experience in another non-earthly domain that um occurs by being taken so that's not a matter of your will i you know just the experience pastorally uh you know i've been a priest now for eight years and just connecting with people at every stage you know i'm so glad that you identified the distinction between like visions that happen in you know near-death experiences like leading up to death i've i've witnessed that firsthand and then i've been present as as people uh pass away and and being present in those places are some of the most uh pastorally intimate experiences that i have in my priesthood and i cherish them each and every time that that i get to be present as a privilege from god and an opportunity to witness firsthand this experience of of christ shepherding people through death and through that experience and and almost hearing what you're expressing like you can be led and then and it what what a fascinating thing and just already experiencing just being pastorally cared for by your ministry listening to what you're sharing and how much these implications can be applied to my own pastoral care is very very helpful in respect to your your studies which seem to be just so extensive in relationship to these near-death experiences um how have you seen that play out in your pastoral care for people i'm sure that you're you're probably pulled into so many experiences and and stories oh for sure um well because i do these uh the the uh kind of the research component of near-death studies for sure a lot of people relate to me their own story so i've heard a lot of people tell me stories my very first assignment when i was ordained the the next week after my ordination i was a hospital chaplain and two hospitals in oregon and so believe me i saw people shepherded uh [Music] you know by the lord to their reward and as i was just saying um this was a near this was not a near-death experience that but my grandfather when he was dying um you know the family and surrounded him and he was basically talking to the angels so you know at one point he he was speaking and he was dutch citizen uh but came over you know to the united states to to build you know the to work on the architecture pearl harbor a long time ago way back in the 1920s but anyway he uh he was speaking dutch to the to the angels and then finally somebody said well granddaddy who are you speaking with and he said oh well i'm speaking with the angels like he thought we could see them so of course uh i know several of my family members that you know angels poor guys just and how do you qualify that in your studies that's like a a near-death like apparition or those call those deathbed visions deathbed visions actually get visited by um either a deceased person or by angels or even by christ uh and little kids almost always have death bed visions if they have a terminal illness they know they're going to die they're you know the the you know they're almost always visited uh by either jesus or some angelic being but in the case of my dad you know he says uh my grandfather goes well you know talking to the angels and so at one point you know as he's chattering away he looks up and he says may i go now and everybody said well well sure and he dies just like that he's like that wow and so oh my god you think you really wear angels i've i've been right next to a beautiful lady i'll never forget it to the day i die and i was i was closer i i i did the sacr you know i celebrated the sacraments with her i did the accommodation ritual and i looked in her eyes and they filled with light and she started to tear up and she expressed to me she said father the angels are all around me it's they're so beautiful and and and you could see that like she was looking through me and she was seeing something that was far you know i i would have loved to see but i saw it in her eyes you know and i'll never forget that yeah oh absolutely i don't think there's any uh delusion to this at all i think that people really are visited and you know with the little kids you know the little the death bed vision often happens the day before which gives the little child you know a chance to explain to the parents you know well you know an angel came and talked to me um last night and he told me that i'm going to die at 2 30 today but i just wanted to tell you everything's going to be all right oh my goodness that angel told me that i'm going to go to heaven and he wanted me to tell you that everything will be all right and then at 2 30 i had my grandfather's experience right on cue bingo that boy just dies and that's that he didn't even know what time it was he just passed to the lord right at that moment so this kind of brings us into where you're going with this study and and you you know we were talking about moving through balls with or without will and then or whatever you want to call it and then um and then being taken to a place and you mentioned taken to a good place uh where there are also bad places like and and i know part of your study was detailing these events that occurred and some of the similarities between them where we can draw some sort of analysis from it yeah exactly so well here's the some statistics samuel parnia had a very extensive study dr samuel parnia uh published in peer-reviewed magazine journal of resuscitation which is i believe still available free of charge right on the website so if you just put samuel parney a p-a-r-n-i-a uh you'll get what's called the awareness study um university of southampton study of 2014 with 2060 patients and this is a very extensive um summary she says um in in his thing about 11 of people uh who are clinically dead have what he calls a definitive near-death experience he has extremely strict criteria for what a near-death experience is and he says it's 11 but he also says that there are a lot of people who either have a sense of either consolation or a lot of people who have a sense of darkness uh who come back they're resuscitated but they didn't have a near-death experience they didn't have a sense of floating out of their body etc but what they did have was a sense of darkness or foreboding so he talked about that there was an earlier study that was published in the lancet which is the number one medical journal of great britain and again very good peer-reviewed study by uh dr pim von lammel and his colleagues and in that i think that was 2001 study uh maybe 2003 study but in any case um that one he reported that about 18 to 19 percent of adults have um you know a near-death experience when they are clinically dead and he thought that about um uh one to two percent were negative and dark and the rest were um either neutral like the person was hanging around as it were in the um in the operating room or maybe outside the hospital walls etc but did not have part two of the experience so that's called an obd and out-of-body experience but they um did not have an nde a near-death experience where um the body goes into a heavenly domain or a darker hellish domain um and so that part of it um well he reports just higher incidents in general so it's somewhere in between children on the other hand well over 80 percent of children who flatline as you put it who are clinically dead about 80 percent to 85 percent of children have um either an obd or an nde an out-of-body experience or a near-death experience and so uh in that particular uh case those children 100 virtually a hundred percent um have a good experience a heavenly experience and a very large number of them uh you know including that colton uh uh bufo the remember the heaven is for real uh boy um he also um had uh a very uh you know positive um uh heavenly experience and did see jesus uh in the midst of that experience and um it is interesting that the little kids who have the experience of jesus and i said it's a large percentage who do those kids uh there was a girl um about 20 maybe 15 years ago or so she actually had um she was a very good artist herself just a little girl who was just artistically talented they came and brought in some good sketch artists and worked with her and finally kind of drew up this picture of jesus and they kind of turned it into something that looked more like a photograph you know through computer enhancements and things of what jesus might look like but any case you can shuffle that picture in with other pictures like sacred heart pictures or other kinds of pictures and you can just say to the kids you know with 20 different pictures hey which one it looks like the jesus that you saw you know when you had your near-death experience the kid going through going through that one it's almost always the same picture that um was taken from what the little girl described and so it is interesting that jesus seems to be a recurrent feature um not only in children's but also oftentimes um what you know so when adults see jesus sometimes they perceive that the white light that they see in this part too they perceive that that white light is jesus sometimes they call the white like god implying like god the father but oftentimes enough that white light is identified as jesus so um in any case it's very loving white light and it's i mean just blindingly almost like a resurrection appearance truly um you know like the apostles experience that we're celebrating now in the easter season uh they were having that this experience of this incredibly black bright uh white light but it doesn't hurt their eyes in any way shape or form and they are just overwhelmed by love and all pain ceases so the minute they get to that beautiful place and so many people report when they get there right that it's not just the white light frequently enough they come to sort of a domain the border as it were of a very very beautiful place and they are amazed uh by the the beauty of it and all pain comes to an end psychological pain emotional pain physical pain just comes to an end and then oftentimes they are greeted by some relatives some of them sometimes like with little kids frequently enough they didn't know that relative um you know because they were dead before the the little child uh really was cognizant of them either wasn't born yet or uh he or she was uh too little to really have any uh you know cognizant or recognizable cognizance of them so anyway the long and short of it is that that these people come down and greet them and and of course in the case of people who return they go well this is not your time uh but uh you know here's what you can expect or something of that nature and people will say well you know you know they will come back and and they'll say well so and so like you know my aunt gertrude told me that uh you you so the maybe he's speaking to his mother that you and she had a teddy bear you know and uh and it had a secret name and the mother will go wow yeah and of course his aunt gertrude is is her sister and she goes oh what was the teddy bear's name um yeah and uh and of course uh he'll identify the secret name and then you know the mother will be blown away you remember colton bufo again from the um you know evan is for real and remember him he met his little sister his little sister and if anybody thinks that babies inside the womb don't have a soul guess again because uh um colton's sister was only two months old and was in the womb of um her mother and uh and she comes she's the first right she comes right to greet her brother and she throws her arms around her brother and kisses him and of course the brother goes well who are you and she goes well i'm your sister and he goes i wasn't aware that i had a sister like you uh what's your name and of course she goes well i don't have a name yet and he goes oh why not well mom and dad didn't quite know whether i was a boy or a girl so they they just didn't name me well colton goes back as you know and and he drops this on his mom just incidentally you know he says hey mom you know i was in heaven i i met my sister and she goes well don't be silly you know your sister she's right here no not that sister i met another sister and she goes well what do you mean another sister well she came up to me and told me that she you were that she was in your tummy but you but she couldn't stay there and so she died and so she's in heaven and the mother goes she's just dropping the jaw right oh i could imagine what was her name he said well you and dad didn't name her wow and of course that was it you know wow oh my goodness frequently happens you know so you have this huge record that would the kellys and bruce grayson and emily kelly and her husband um there's a whole uh institute um at the university of virginia medical school that's dedicated to the near-death studies these kelly's and bruce grayson put together a profile of many many of these people who had death bed visions i mean not dead but who had near death experiences where they had actually witnessed and experienced a deceased relative and in that heavenly domain and through that um um you know identified data that these kids couldn't possibly have known or the adults couldn't possibly have known how immensely consoling i'm blown away yeah that's the feeling i have you know and as you as you might expect for a blind guy like me 81 of blind people who experience clinical death see for the first time when they're clinically dead now of course these people could you know that this just kills the hallucination hypothesis right because blind people who are blind from birth uh which i was not blind from birth but people who are blind from birth they have no visual images in their brain and so the the idea that you're going to hallucinate with your physical brain you know a visual image which you never had because you were blind from birth from your brain is completely preposterous right yeah you know um that 81 of these blind people see for the first time and what's interesting is you know like one of the experiences one of the kids we use and we we have these modules on near-death experiences for the young people uh it's called the seven essential modules and module one is just on the proof the evidence of a soul and so one of the kids we have embedded videos in these modules and uh one of the kids uh is a 16 year old kid and he goes right through the uh the hospital walls and he goes you know when i was sitting out there in the hospital for the first time in my life i looked down and i said why that's snow on the ground there and he you know i saw the train tracks embedded in the snow that's how i knew it was snow and and uh you know he begins he says you know this train came by just as i was standing up there um you know and uh and it had a big huge sign on the back of it with an arrow pointing to the right and it went right through this grove of trees and then went you know to the right um you know and and disappeared out of view now there's no way i mean you now you can take a train schedule and you can say yes that train passed that point right outside that hospital at exactly this time when that guy was having an out of body experience and it did have a big huge shine with a big arrow pointing to the right on the back of that train and it did go through a grove of trees so all i can say is how did a blind guy do that well and by the way it was outside the hospital walls how to get outside the hospital walls something is going on and that's why it draw drops the the kids it really does the the the students who listen to these modules just can't believe what they're hearing father you would describe some of the things people experience when they have a positive near-death experience in that second phase they see familiar family members or maybe non-familiar family members who have been praying for them they see christ they see angels what are some of the experiences that people would describe as negative you said maybe a darkness or a foreboding nature what are some of those experiences like that people recount and would you say that the statistical reporting of those is lower than anticipated because people neglect to share that they had a negative experience yeah i think a lot of those negative experiences are repressed which means that uh they basically might appear in the subconscious mind but they're certainly not appearing in the conscious mind because uh we we have a thing called the reticular activating system and we can screen out um images and screen out even visual data that we do not want to see or even that we don't expect to see so um uh we can focus uh so clearly so uh you know people don't really believe it but if you ever saw that movie you know where they uh told everybody now just count the number of people on on the team uh you know how many people were on the floor for team for the white team and how many people were on the floor for the black team and of course people were counting all these things and you know and you know you can do this in a room where everybody's watching the same movie and um and then finally you say okay that's good that's good did anybody see the gorilla come out and start dribbling the basketball and people go the gorilla you know and so they're they go no there was no gorilla you know and then oh let me play the very same video for you again and sure enough there's this gorilla that comes out bouncing basketball looks at the screen and disappears you know if you're not looking for it if you're really looking for how many people have white uniforms and how many have black uniforms for all intents and purposes right you uh you can even screen that out well people can repress very negative things and we do this all the time and if we didn't i mean we'd go nuts quite frankly we'd all have ptsd so uh for an example is always your nose i mean if you try to see your nose you can see your nose but in normal daily life you don't see your nose because otherwise it would drive you nuts and that's kind of the the phenomenon you're you're talking about right especially if you had a schnauze like ryan delacrosse you had a guys like that could you imagine looking at that every day because it's midnight father's pitcher doesn't see my nose right now it is an action of mercy trust me so yeah people do repress it but those who remember it uh you know can report everything from deep darkness and foreboding and loneliness and emptiness that's one experience all the way up to yes demonic presences that seem to be trying to grip them or hold them down or to possess them have you ever come across and studied the near-death experiences or visions or prophetic nature of private revelation um you know if a saint had a vision of heaven hell or purgatory um kind of in relationship to private revelation and what you study scientifically have you ever looked at any of that or or or researched any of that and and were there common experiences to say like a saint faustina uh vision of heaven hell or purgatory and and somebody else's uh account well i haven't done that myself but i imagine some other researchers may have done it i haven't read any of that literature of anybody who made any kind of consistent or systematic study or tried to find points of comparison um if it if it exists i'd be most interested to read it but right now i'm i'm not familiar with it it's certainly not in the scientific literature or the medical literature uh along those lines but there might be some spiritual books uh on it but um you know we have to uh you know you know all of these things are anecdotal so and some of them could be produced you know by our own uh visions what what really where science can get access to it um you know is um when somebody reports seeing on gertrude or when colton reports seeing his sister and they give you facts and information you could have never uh you know had exposure to or was never disclosed to you because you were a little kid and then suddenly you know all this stuff and kids are the best witnesses because they have no agenda whatsoever now what's really interesting though um you know is that uh you can actually modify a polygraph you know a lie detector as it were you can modify a polygraph to look at the response of the nervous system to various kinds of images like death images and death stimuli and um interestingly anybody who's been through a near-death experience adult or child if you um and uh or at least a remembered near-death experience there could have been a near-death experience that was suppressed etc etc but for those who have recollection of the near-death experience uh that particular uh person uh definitely would be uh you know capable of uh of um you know or recalling it um and um they if you show them death images you show them skull and crossbones and sharks and all kinds of death images most people have an immediate uh response right a nervous response uh to the death image because it's a subconscious response you can't do anything uh to stop it even if you have a lot of faith and you go ah those things don't bother me in your conscious mind they may not but in their subconscious mind they still do and that's measured and quantified by that polygraph reading correct polygraph but if you show it to a person with a near-death experience zero death anxiety go figure that that is it that's very interesting wow yeah i'm very curious father spitzer to to to dive a little bit deeper into something you brought up with respect to the vision or the conscious experience of the boot and the specific way that the the um you know the shoelace was under the heel of it and you know it seemed that you know on a temporal sphere the experience consciously uh is is not on a long lines of like a temporal linear kind of experience it seems like the consciousness of of the person with this near-death experience is modified in some way where time is affected yeah that's very true now if they're looking at something um that's going on for example in the hospital room something of that nature that does seem to have a temporal continuity that's pretty similar to the temporal continuity that's actually occurring so there's no collapse of time or no expansion of time um you know that that's you know if it's something in the operating room or something outside the hospital in this world that's true however when they go to a different domain this heavenly domain or if it may be a hellish one it seems like they have a huge number of experiences in a relatively short time so for example again you know i i you know there are many other examples besides colton um you know and uh the little kid i mean there's another uh book on um you know uh that that was uh well there are several major studies that have been done as i said by by um the kellys etc now those people um uh seem to have just like huge catalogs of experiences um that uh that are very very difficult to explain in like three four minutes you know that the experience is taking place and yet that you know they go from one place to another place and and colton you know uh recounts these images that are going on in in so many different contexts um yet at the same time they all seem to happen within that three to four minute period when he was out of it now father has there been any studies or any input on maybe individuals of not of a christian tradition maybe a muslim or a um and what is their experience comparatively to those and is their experience impacted by their religious nature during their lifetime or do they also see jesus and experience the same type of things well with respect to the obd part the out-of-body experience part you know um um that part basically is pretty similar because again you're describing what's going on in a temporal or worldly context now when they pass to another world the initial moment of what they experience right can be more culturally adept to the images that they would be expecting or seeing and so their relatives might come to them maybe in indian clothing of course or something of that nature or they might experience a person who's like a judge uh in uh maybe a a hindu court you know it would greet them you know uh as they're coming you know to this domain however those who would experience uh the white light that would be very similar and in fact uh even atheists who have an experience of the white light um uh identify that as something uh or even agnostics would identify it as something akin to god or the divine or divine love or something of that nature pretty similar to what we might experience uh i don't you know i know aj air who is the great logical positivist um i remember he kind of tried to push god out of philosophy uh he did have a near-death experience and he did report it to his nurses when he came back but boy i'll tell you all of his friends rushed in uh from cambridge and basically said you know don't be talking about this stuff so from then on he zipped up his mouth and never talked about his near-death experience although he did disclose it to several nurses and they disclosed it to the world so yeah i mean even aj air so imagine that father i'm very curious about the history of these types of studies and the reason why is because i think a lot of medical a lot of the medical community meaning doctors and you know professors and things there's could be sex of those who uh like our friend here from cambridge um that do their best to to to kind of remove god from uh medicine and obviously we're into a lot of the moral uh um functions of the medical community now with euthanasia obviously abortion's always been there yeah but what what is the impetus of this study and what what does the medical community hope to gain from it because it seems like we're the only ones getting from it i don't know right well here's to maybe here some statistics might matter even though the the people in the popular media try to pretend like most doctors are agnostics or atheists they are not 88 of doctors according to a big study from the national institute of health 88 are religiously affiliated and of that um number uh 66 are moderately too highly affiliated with their religion so doctors are by no means agnostics or or atheists they are believers now um there was another very large study that was done of scientists in general and that study was done by the pew center on the american association for the advancement of scientists science members and their determination was that 51 of scientists believed in god or a higher supernatural power and 41 percent uh declared themselves to be either agnostic or atheist with eight percent probably being too scared to declare so um the the main point though is is no even with scientists the majority of scientists are theistically inclined and these are big major studies so the popular uh opinion that scientists and doctors are really agnostics and atheists that's not really true um it's quite the opposite especially for the doctors and i have a very good reasons why i believe that doctors oh by the way 71 percent of doctors according to this was a finkelstein study that was done 71 percent of doctors believe in miracles past and present so that's again you know that's like wow um you know that that's a pretty high statistic you know nearly three-quarters of the medical population even believe in miracles and i the reason i believe that this is the case is because doctors do see miracles doctors do see and hear about uh death bed visions doctors do hear about people who are resuscitated and have had their very experiences we were talking about doctors really do experience people who have healings that are absolutely inexplicable now of course they don't go publicly declaring why this is a miracle they you know they want to keep their scientific protocols in their you know their uh their their scientific green card uh you know uh in good shape so they they don't go around proclaiming things that they don't have absolute evidence of but by and large most people i think privately a lot of doctors really have seen things that they find so inexplicable it really turns them around it's like those two doctors at lourdes i don't know if you ever read franz verfel wrote a book on lourdes and it was called the song of bernadette it's a really beautiful book but in any case in that book this doctor doe zoo is the one whose name i remember uh was very very skeptical you know you gotta be kidding me water you know gonna cure people a blessed virgin mary appearing ah you know he was very skeptical and then all of a sudden he begins to uh he has all the x-rays of this little kid who just gets the mother in desperation goes running over to the waterfront that's spilling from the exact place that bernadette had identified and she just throws her a little kid you know who's paralyzed and and not just paralyzed but is going through a fit that's going to lead um almost immediately to death and he has suffered throughout his entire life from this disease throat puts him in the water brings him out and the baby's completely cured those who you know suddenly goes you know there's something going on here and of course then he sees another six or so of these miracles and he then turns on a dime and instead of being the guy who goes to the bar discussing all the latest liberal uh trends of you know you know how science has overcome the miraculous and the superstitious in religion he becomes the advocate of religion and becomes one of the first doctors uh to monitor the clinics that are being built around the lord's grotto so just i think this happens all the time to docs but again if you don't read these studies from the pew center or from the national institute of health or from the um you know finkelstein uh institute etc if you don't read they're good studies you almost think from the popular media every scientist as an atheist but in point of fact the majority of scientists artheists you know and father i think it's important to note that you are a catholic priest you are a jesuit but you are also deeply um ingrained in academia or in academia you were a professor at georgetown you were the president of gonzaga university you were professor at uh st louis university you have multiple degrees doctorates i mean you're you are a priest but you are also a man of logic and reason you're not just you know so but i think a lot of times someone watching this might say well of course the priest believes that when you die you see jesus he's supposed to that's his child that's why he's a collar but you are not just a priest with you know what they will dismiss as bronze age mythology i mean there is there's more to what you're saying and i think it's important to note that you have those bona fides so that when you talk on this that it's coming from the perspective of that faith and also of reason like a scientific pursuit should be yeah and that's precise yeah you may as well have the empirical data you may as well statistically categorize it and assess it and you may as well also use logic in every single turn and remember those three great logical rules uh you need the most complete uh the explanation that explains the most evidence wins that's number one number two that uh you need uh objectively verifiable evidence and number three um there are um far more errors of omission than commission and then you take those uh those three rules and you pile them on of course the rules of formal logic so we don't make any formal syllogistic errors and you probably can get pretty close to the truth and if you keep doing that again and again and again with near-death experiences and you keep doing that again and you know i mean like you take that that maximum the the theory that explains the most evidence wins well near-death experiences are not explained by physicalist explanations i mean they don't explain how 81 of blind people can see they do not explain how you can have vertical evidence that is reported by people outside the hospital etc reported 100 accurately they do not explain right now hallucinations are oftentimes confusing and very very uh you know dark in in many ways they present images that are disturbing to consciousness near-death experiences almost universally are very heartening to people unless you have a direct bad dark experience um you know that that uh you know kind of a hellish kind uh or a foreboding emptiness kind um but the rest of the time it's really uh they're they're not like hallucinations at all they're very different but if you look at it yeah the heavenly explanation the transcendent soul explanation the transcendent soul capable of surviving bodily death explanation the god who is a loving god explanation tends to explain much much more than any current physicalist theory and there was a fellow um his name was mario beauregard dr mario beauregard a neuroscientist over there at the university of arizona uh he wrote a book called brain wars brain wars and uh so if you uh if you have a you know an inclination you might want to take a look at that because he takes every single physicalist naturalist explanation and just rips into what's the problem what is not explained by this theory yes a naturalistic explanation may explain one or two points out of 20 but you've got to explain the other 18 points and frankly the trans physical soul explanation does that much better than the physicalist ones and the second thing to you know i if you're interested in a summary of it i have a book called the souls of word yearning um if you go to chapter 5 i have a summary of uh what beauregard and his colleagues have done by way of research i'll make sure i put links to those books on our page so that people if they want to read more about that study or about your book they can go ahead and access that and also i think it's a good time to mention that if you do want to learn more and see more content from father spitzer you can go to magistcenter.com and you can go to crediblecatholic.com and there you're going to find all sorts of amazing things on cosmology on science on philosophy i've been on there so many times i couldn't tell you i i fanboy over his site so it's really great to be able to get the opportunity to talk to him but those resources if you're a curious catholic if you're a curious agnostic and you have the the um the desire to learn more from a balanced perspective go check that out so magiscenter.com incredible catholic i'll make sure the links are below on that great thank you father spitzer i can speak very very confidently on behalf of ryan and ryan and our catholic talk show family we are so appreciative of your ministry your deposit of faith and intellect and reason it is such a gift it has been a gift to each of us i i am totally lit up right now and i am confident all of our listeners and viewers are as well we want to take a moment and just express our gratitude to our patrons that make it possible for this show to continue if you're considering becoming a financial contributor to the show be sure to go to catholictalkshow.com forward slash patreon and there you'll be able to support the show we've got some cool gear to send your way as we build out the culture of our faith and live that communally it is such a gift to have father spitzer on to share from such a wonderful perspective of great academic study and please follow up with the links that ryan shiel is putting in our comment section check out father spitzer's materials be sure to support him in prayer and share this beautiful work i know personally from my experience working with a relative that is a doctor he has come to the faith uh through examples just like father spitzer and you know from an agnostic background to a you know a weekly attendee in his in his denomination of christianity i'm just so proud of the work that you've done father spitzer and thank you for sharing your perspective today as my honor and pleasure thanks so much you guys absolutely now before we let you go we've got to give a big shout out to our sponsors our sponsor hallow is the number one catholic app in the app store today and there is great reason for it the materials that they have on there that spiritually enrich from the catholic tradition of prayer and mysticism is mind-blowing they have the bible in a year with father michael schmitz which i am clearly no father michael schmitz but his materials are just absolutely inspiring they have lectio divina you know you could pray with your family your spouse and i know ryan delacrosse is a big fan and uses it every day that's right yeah it's a great app i use it with my kids a lot of times you struggle with prayer if you find yourself struggling with prayer it's easy to just turn on this app and be guided to a meditation and the guidance of this meditation is ancient catholic tradition um and you won't be uh i mean it's just amazing to connect to god through this tradition and to be guided by somebody that can help you that's knowledgeable about it so i highly recommend it and our other sponsor is catholic woodworker um this this is these are the most amazing rosaries and sacramentals that you can find out there and you know heirloom quality rosaries that are highly crafted you can actually choose some of your own materials go check them out that's catholicwoodworker.com and you'll see a lot of amazing quality catholic um rosaries and and other uh products there for you as well yeah check out the crucifixes check out those home altars that's a really great thing to bring into your home as an altar as a place to focus your your prayer life within your home with your family uh that's one of the things that makes catholic woodworker really um really unique and a really great place to go so again hey guys i think we've kind of made it we've got father spitzer on our podcast five minutes finally from the beginning but we have met one of our big goals good job guys you took us 35 episodes or so we're getting there thanks father spitzer god bless you god bless you god bless each and every one of you out there thank you for bringing us into your home with the talk show on youtube click the bell and click subscribe today you don't want to miss materials each and every week and we will see you next week god bless [Music] you

Channel: The Catholic Talk Show

Views: 248,438

Rating: 4.9056015 out of 5

Keywords: Catholic, Catholic Podcast, Catholic Talk Show, Ryan Scheel, Ryan DellaCrosse, Father Rich Pagano, Catholic Radio, Catholic TV, Catholic Show, Matt Fradd, Mike Schmitz, Robert Barron, Catholic Answers, Catholic Stuff You Should Know, Church Militant, Bishop Barron, Breaking In The Habit, NDE, OBE, Near Death Experience, Out of Body Experience, White Light, Heaven, Hell, Fr. Robert Spitzer, Robert Spitzer, Heaven is Real, Vision of Heaven, Vision of Hell, Flatline, Brain Death

Id: eo35yQ1om7I

Length: 61min 7sec (3667 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 26 2021