How Science Supports Belief in the Spiritual World w/Fr. Robert Spitzer | Chris Stefanick Show

famous atheist George Wald said 400 years ago there was a collection of molecules named Shakespeare which produced Hamlet ew what a dark world view but you know what it's very consistent with atheism this idea that we're we're no more than a self-aware bag of bones very consistent with the atheist worldview but you know what it's not consistent with it's not consistent with our experience of life it's not consistent with anything we hope for from life when you fall in love you hope that that experience has a greater reality than neurons firing in my brain making me feel a certain way friendship same thing when you think about eternity and life after death and all that you might become you hope that that's not just your brain tricking you into thinking that you are no more than self-aware space sludge destined for nothing and the beauty about this Catholic Christian faith is Jesus says go ahead hope everything that you hope for about who you are about what you're destined for lean into that because it's an answer to that hope faith shows us that that hope hasn't answered you know what else is starting to show us more and more praise God science is showing us more and more that our hope is something we should lean into that we are more than a self-aware bag of bones and I'm so excited to dive into this topic today with one of the most Brilliant Minds in the Catholic Church who I just embarrassed sitting next to me Father Spitzer we're going to blow your mind as we dive into stories of near-death experiences thanks for being with us father Spitzer thank you so much oh no it's really my honor to be with you Chris oh man what a gift I'll tell you I was talking to my dad before filming the show and I I could just hear his jaw dropping the other side you're going to be interviewing father Spitzer I've interviewed a lot of people it's the first time but he was completely Starstruck and I feel bad for having him down don't be Starstruck for a normal guy in every way that's right except blind and genius I'm like everybody else you know when I put my pants on the morning I'm been a genius with um but really I'm grateful for all you bring to the church which by the way guys you can find out at magiascenter m-a-g-i-s-center.com that's where you find all the father's person's work his books his research which is incredible I make it kind of a a modern day Aquinas in a lot of ways with the I answer that right you're you're diving into questions people have and giving really solid answers uh father Spitzer is a PhD in physics actually philosophy of science philosophy of science yeah metaphysics metaphysics special that's right so is is work is is incredible all right so near-death experiences uh when I first heard you talk about this I thought wow the world needs to hear that and I'm happy to do my little part in helping this news get out uh how would you define a near-death experience well it occurs when somebody has a heart attack or could be an accident or a drowning victim uh the heart stops for generally over 30 seconds once that happens the electrical activity in the cerebral and frontal cortices ceases and so it manifests as a flat EEG fixed and dilated pupils no gag reflex basically almost no Electric electrical activity in the brain at all just a few sputterings of neurons in the lower brain so what um you're dead you're basically dead you know what they call clinically dead during that time a spirit-like body you know it does have a sense of being elongated it has a sense of having Limbs and and so forth you know your body can see and it can hear it can remember it can recall it certainly all your memories are intact and sometimes you know maybe if you're suffering from Alzheimer's much much better than they were when you were in your physical body body and so the the key element of all of these things is that blind people 81 percent of them can see uh during clinical death so you do have eyes apart from your physical eyes and of course when you can see you know 81 percent of people could report veritical data we have you know one 16 year old and one of our modest videos you know he's blind from birth and he goes right outside the hospital during his near-death experience and as he's out there in the outside the hospital for the first time he sees um you know he passes right through the walls right and uh just sees the he does you're not subject to any physical laws like solidity gravity Etc yeah so he passed right through the hospital walls and he's out there and he says for the first time in my life I actually saw snow and I saw these grooves in the snow from you know the the train tracks and this train was passing by I mean and you know all trains have schedules and so he you know he could coordinate the schedule of that train with his um heart attack and near-death experience so you know this Train's passing by he says I looked at it and it had a sign on the back of it with an arrow pointing to the right and sure enough the train went around the corner and into a Grove of trees to the right this is a blind guy I've never had a visual image in his physical brain for the rest of his life couldn't possibly hallucinate it anyway he's speaking 100 accurately and the kids in the room who are looking at this video of course are going no way and the teachers are going way you know I mean absolutely you know these you know this is what happens all the time me explain by the way why 76 percent of Physicians declare themselves to be theists Believers in God really yeah 76 and also um of that three-quarters of them practice religion um and of that 74 not of the 76 but some 24 percent of total Physicians believe in miracles past and present and it's pretty evident that most of them have seen a miracle probably at least once a year in their practice if they're actually in the real clinical Hospital area and also they see hear about the near-death experiences incessantly I mean ask any nurse yeah you know who's been in an ICU I mean she's heard it all she believes no no questions and and physicists believe I mean oh yes there's this crazy idea that that faith is for the stupid and it's just it's just a shallow secular rebranding of Christianity because they don't like what we have to say or maybe make moral demands in their lives right yeah well but the reality is brilliant people that believe throughout history oh yeah and not only that I mean let's face it today you know 51 of scientists that would be like physicist Kevin says well you know it's a biologist 51 overall say that they are theists they're Believers in God or a higher Transcendent power um 21 declare themselves to be agnostics and 20 percent declare themselves to be atheists right by far yeah and so you look at that but then you look at the Young scientists this is the interesting Trend because young scientists 66 declare themselves to be theists Believers in God or high Transcendent power and um only about 15 percent declare themselves to be agnostic 11 um atheists so it's really trending that's beautiful yeah yeah this is a 2014 Pew survey of the American Association we're going to tie that back to the practice of religion right but there's but at least there's this surge or a strength and theism oh yeah because you haven't been believing something yeah uh yeah the evidence so um the story you just described is Amit striking right that doesn't happen unless there's a soul that cannot happen can't be explained by well first of all the physical body is in the operating room yeah and the of the soul body is outside of the hospital looking accurately describing things that happen that actually right down to the second happened at the very time he had his heart attack wow so the the key thing though in the whole process is not only is it you know veritically true but he's blind from verse so he can't have any visual images in his physical brain to hallucinate so I mean how can a physicalist even begin to you know explain this you can't I like that word physicalist yeah that's what kind of scientism or physical people who just believe there's nothing but matter that's right wow I think everything can be reduced to matter yeah exactly that's it okay so these near-death experiences uh how long have people been talking about these things obviously it's different now because they're yeah I mean it goes back of course two thousand three thousand years we see literary examples of people who think they you know um had had an experience but recently uh starting with the um basically a book called Life After Life that was written by Raymond moody right after life yeah that was back way back in 76 75 or 76 Moody wrote this book but it was based on Dr Elizabeth kubler-rod says previous studies that have been published in 1973-74 um which showed that a significant number she was studying death and dying and a significant number of her patients were actually having this experience of you know um a spirit Soul leaving their body and you know they would go various places right I mean one lady goes right outside the hospital uh room she's looking at the hospital from the outside looking at the hospital from the third floor says oh there's a tennis shoe there with a worn left toe and with a shoelace underneath the heel and so one of the research temperatures for one of the doctors actually crawled out on that ledge found the the tennis shoe there exactly as described so it's like the they can do a lot of things but the point that you're making is is that you know it's very very difficult to explain how any of this vertical data could possibly be accurately explained 100 percent um you know if you didn't have a soul body that was doing it in the brain anyways flat EEG I mean if there's no electrical activity in the cerebral cortex you ain't doing anything totally right and if there's no electrical activity in the visual and auditory courtesies you're not doing anything seeing or hearing so let's cancel that to begin with blind or otherwise yeah but the point is pretty clear that something is going on but it's resuscitation that's what started the whole thing off and so when resuscitations became very commonplace and that was in the late 60s then all of a sudden you see these reports because people would come back from their heart attacks and previously you know maybe two three four percent might but all of a sudden now when you get sixty percent coming back you're getting a boatload of data that you never had before and so this uh provoked Raymond Mooney write that first book um you know that kind of got oh so many scientists involved Bruce Grayson started an entire you know um program at the medical school at the University of Virginia just really devoted to near-death experiences uh in their Department of uh of um uh you know cognition studies and brain studies and then Mario Beauregard got you know it was a a neurophysicist got into the act because um you know as a neurologist you know he's trying to see whether any of the physicalist explanations can work and he wrote that very famous book Brain Wars then Brain Wars because you know the physicalist versus the transcendentalists basically transcendentals believe in a soul and he is of course a transcendentalist and he was lining up with uh Grayson and um a van lamel and uh you know aparnia and a group of scientists like that so they started studying this even more uh diligently with longer term um you know a longitudinal studies with a very very high standards that for example were published in peer-reviewed medical journals like the Lancet that's the number one medical journal in Great Britain and that journal actually published the 2003 Von lommel studies which show conclusively not only that blind people see but that the veritical data is so overwhelming wow people coming in and saying well you know I I went to the waiting room next door and I heard all of my relatives discussing me you know know so I came back and I told him hey you know uh you know what you were saying about me there that's not fair you know by the way you were wearing one watch would you say when Grandma dies yeah be careful what you say so that you know you know so many of these stories I mean let me one guy uh well you know this nurse comes in and says Oh Mr so and so we lost your dentures no you didn't the nurse um you know who came into the room just before you put the paddles on me actually took you know that my dentures out of my mouth and she opened the door in the OR underneath the machine that looks like this and threw the dentures in there and slammed them if you find that the uh the nurse you know you'll find my dentures and sure enough but this happens like 24 7 all the time on these things which is incredible yeah I know I think the strongest argument of the physicalists would be that you know as the oxygen is leaving your brain you might have a dream like Trans State which within seconds you could have a dream but um but the the data that shows that people accurately report things outside their bodies and it really is a good Smackdown to that yeah it is the other things are too there's two other really major things the first is of course your brain is very active if you're having dream lengths or if you're suffering from an anoxia right a lack of of oxygen in the brain uh something of that nature the brain is exceedingly active it's struggling uh to maintain whereas in a near-death experience it's the exact opposite flat EEG not an active uh brain that is uh you know taking place so I mean how are you going to explain it a dreamlet or you know a hallucination makes the brain very very active if it's a genuine physical hallucination but in the near-death The Experience there's no real brain activity going on at all except for like I said a few sputterings in there in the very lower range you said that people feel elongated so there's a sense of finite finitude but if they feel somewhat taller yeah like extend extended like you like I feel extended in my body right now yeah you know and you you know because they can feel excited they feel like they have limbs even though you know it's kind of like not the same physical limbs because your limbs will go right through the wall right you know because you're you're you know you're not really subject to you know physical uh processes in in laws and structures like you were before so um the main thing though is is uh you know it's it's uh it does give you that sense of being who you were and uh you know visually uh like when you meet deceased relatives you know why I only gave the first part of the near-death experiences yeah you know that's around here on this Earth but um you know but 35 of patients who are having uh this near-death experience uh they go to another world and they experience what uh oftentimes well in 85 percent cases they will experience deceased relatives and friends who come and tell them oh it's not your time or something oh wow and you know and also they will you know meet God uh who they call a very loving white light or the the loving white light it's also called Jesus Christ a lot uh and uh um you know how they know that they say they just know it um you know and they don't you know the the white light's not talking to them in a normal voice like you and I are exchanging data but rather you know it's it's more of a a kind of an intellectual um awareness of what somebody is saying but uh also um uh you know they do have that more or less Heavenly or beautiful experience 15 are not very good experiences those will be called Dark experiences and that 15 percent can be well experiences of severe emptiness and loneliness alienation and pain and among some of them there is a real experience of evil and hatred uh as well so there is a diversity of um of experiences but the majority yeah 85 are coming back feeling pretty good about life yeah and they also the those people lose their death anxiety completely for the rest of their lives wow so in other words if you put kind of like a modified polygraph on them to measure their nervous uh you know the sympathetic nervous system reaction uh to a particular um a stimulus so you could put maybe a skull and crossbones or a shark yeah they have no reaction whereas a normal person who didn't have an nde a pleasant nde yeah would say whoa you know I mean they wouldn't say anything but your sympathetic nervous system would just register that right off the charts that you didn't like that right it's a death anxiety the interesting thing about death anxiety is it is subconscious so you can't control it even as a very strong religious believer like you and I are I mean consciously it's not going to bother us but still you look at that shark image or you look at the skull and crossbones or something you're going to have a death anxiety the human survival mechanism exactly though this conversation decreases my death anxiety as we're sitting a comforting Grace from God because I obviously we live in heaven but it's really like no no Chris sometimes the beliefs occupy this part of my brain that's more story than it is history or you know what I mean like more uh more imagination even though I believe the that thing yeah and this kind of helps move it to no no this is realize this table oh yeah which I know by faith but like no no you really helped they don't let me know and that University of Virginia um uh Medical School uh has cataloged a lot of encounters with deceased relatives and in about 20 percent of the cases the um person who is having the near-death experience did not know the relative so many of those were children right and the children's you know meet this nice lady or who are you you know well I'm your aunt so and so oh I didn't know I had an answer well I died before you were born oh that's great to meet you you know well now I just have to tell you that you tell your mother that you saw me and that everything is okay and you tell her that you know the secret name of our doll uh you know which was oh my gosh megabind or something I don't so the the little child comes back and says you know Mom I met uh so and so and she said she died and you guys had a secret name for your doll and it's this wow and the mother of course and having not told that child any of that is jaw dropped well um the Kellys and the graysons at the University of Virginia actually have cataloged a large number of these things and you know if you didn't believe that there's some encounter going on over on the beautiful side of the equation um there really is a considerable amount of evidence that people have encountered strangers I mean you know um you know one kid actually you know is name was Colton Burpo who you know in that heaven is for real anecdote but you know this is very typical um is where you know they'll he'll say well I ran into granddaddy you know and of course uh you know um oh you know did he look like that and they show him a nice picture granddaddy when he was about 70 or 80. yeah and he goes no that's that's not him then they show well here's granddaddy in the World War II or something uh you know young man with the unit that's him wow wow you know and so it's like and then of course the images of Jesus where you know they fix upon them and I forget the little girl's name now um you know but you know they fix upon uh that particular she had a very um she was kind of visionary girl and she kind of uh had some help from a uh artist you know and she was very good artist herself to draw you know depicted a picture of Jesus that she met in a quasi near-death experience that's the one that the kids identify they'll go through 15 pictures of Jesus Sacred Heart pictures illustrations I want to see this picture yeah um we don't have of it but you can get it just go to Google and just put a girl who drew a picture of Jesus from nde Wow and that's the one that gets identified now people sense that this light is love what what what's the the top uh descriptive words they use or how they felt it was it just well first of all joyful love just feeling loved or what is this three things are um normal in this well first of all if you go there and encounter the white light you are going to get a a period where it's called a review of life and not all of it is um uh you know particularly positive but you're basically encountering God so it's like you're okay yeah I feel loved I can repent with honesty without trying to hide it that's correct Human Relationships I can reveal the warts and all if I know you love me anyway that's right and you can look at and it becomes a cause celeb right for reform you know I'm going to to do better next time yeah the second thing is of course as you already described it is the overwhelming sense of love and the peace the security and the joy that comes from being in the presence of that loving white right security very much like I I don't have to worry anymore and so if there was tremendous emotional anxiety those emotional anxieties are really rectified when they come back into their physical bodies the emotional anxiety the sense of insecurity the sense of emptiness and alienation abandonment that really is decreased significantly in those who are feeling that kind of pain and finally anybody who was feeling like terrible pain in one of my books you know on suffering you know the uh you know the light shines on in the darkness um in that book I've got this uh particularly poignant sort of nde this lady basically um you know has been horrible physical pain all her life I mean terrible terrible physical pain when she has her nde it's all gone you know she gets up in the presence of that light and the physical pain is 100 rectified you're almost making me want an nde well you know not that bad Lord I remember that's right not when I will exactly but anyway what about those who I talked to a guy once um I was fishing with this guy he's like you know I've heard about ndes yeah uh I died I had a heart attack I was dead for like 10 minutes like it was a really extraordinarily long amount of time and miraculously he's okay he's mentally okay everything music I don't remember anything yeah that's bothered him like so but I know there's a percentage of people who don't have this who died well actually that's the majority okay um and I got a couple of thoughts about it but right now according to the van lamel study 18 of adults who die will have an nde okay the other you know uh part let's say 82 percent well not and so you shouldn't get uh shaken by that um because there's lots of life to be lived and somehow God thinks it's best that you know you not have that experience that you have to make up your mind there has to be some decisions that have to be made things are not solidified uh in that person's life and so they're not ready for a kind of judgment yet there have to be some things but the lesson I would take by the way children have a significantly higher rate of having ndes um when they undergo clinical death than adults I do again they're innocent so maybe you know um you know there's less uh rationale for for that I don't know but like the Colton burpos of this world are actually uh much more um higher percentage-wise okay um than than the adults but I think it really comes down to the fact that um God is not going to force somebody into Faith yep I think they're going to have to make that decision on their own and if they have the near-death experience it's just gonna plummet them over the line the people who really do have uh the ndes well many of them and not all of them have a very a secure Faith but there are atheists who've had ndes I mean I came back with faith I came back with faith well you know I faith is ultimately in the will right and yeah it's always good to remember that we can I mean this stuff's happening and most of the world chooses not to look at it because they are afraid of the implications of that yeah if I believe then therefore I have to stop doing X Y and Z that's right you know I I think of the scripture um with Lazarus right and uh if you know and the poor man the poor beggar and uh you know if I could go back from the dead and warn my family it's like no if someone even rose from the dead that's right if they don't want to believe they're not going to believe and that's right Jesus rose from the dead there's evidence for that and there's uh all this evidence of staring Us in the face but the second the world is paying more attention to this because it's underlying oh yeah well you know what's very interesting is it's now beginning to be hard to escape since the van lamel study Samuel parnia at the University of Southampton in England did a 2060 uh patient study which is highly highly accurate really good longitudinal first-rate study that you know really does you know evidence the same thing sixty percent of those cases simply cannot be explained in any uh not 60 I'm sorry um uh 16 of those cases cannot be explained in any uh physicalist way and so there's just I mean it's like you can't explain it if you don't have a soul and then now just in 2022 just actually a few months ago the New York Academy of Sciences came out and did a big peer-reviewed study of all the peer-reviewed medical studies of near-death experiences and basically affirmed that there was a likelihood that your Consciousness would not only survive physical death this is a New York Academy in science I would not only survive a bodily death but that it would take a journey uh the journey leave your body believe your body and and you could be just in this world like the blind boy going out of the hospital or going over to the other side take a journey to heaven and see near death you know have relatives and then there would be they do mention that there is a Life review that is associated uh frequently when near-death experiences then returned to the body all of this is you know set out there very plainly you know so I mean it's getting right up there so that even people who um you know uh you know consider themselves to be very scientific I would recommend you just go to the New York just put a New York Academy of Sciences uh you know affirmation of near-death experiences into your Google there and you will see it wow and um you'll see the study and it's pretty amazing uh to see that and of course the definitely the whole party up as I have a party estate from uh resuscitation Journal a journal recitation that was from University of Southampton all there free of charge the I think the whole Lancet study of Van lamel Von lamell is there a free of charge now on the on the internet incredible praise the Lord hey thank you so much for sure it was my pleasure it gives me uh it just increases the hope uh listen do that whole examination of life now confession it's a great idea absolutely and don't wait right amen and praise you Lord uh thank you Jesus he uh he he tells us go ahead and hope hope that there's more that you're more than a bag of bones that that all your longings for fulfillment as a person all along is for love that they have an answer uh because the God who is love create us and you have a soul this is all real and thanks to God the science is affirming this more and more which makes the faith all that much easier to just dive into absolutely right absolutely but all the evidence doesn't equal Faith at the end of the day we got to decide yeah and just give our lives to the Lord who uh it's kind of like marriage right yeah right I knew the evidence about my wife eventually I had to decide the will pushes the intellect Beyond where it could go by itself and just say will you marry me yeah and there's Faith so but this stuff does help you got a good reason behind a person you marry and the god you believe in so uh thanks for diving into these reasons with us today we love you guys thanks for being with us see you next time man wasn't that great listen if you don't want to be happy be sure not to subscribe but if you want a more joyful life the kind of life that God created you for the kind of Life Jesus Promised when he said I came to give you life to the full then make sure you hit subscribe and share this Channel with everybody you know

Channel: Augustine Institute | The Catholic Faith Explained

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Keywords: eucharist, Catholic eucharist, transubstantiation, catholic sacrament, 7 sacraments, augustine institute, formed catholic, ignatius press, lighthouse catholic media, lighthouse talks, Dr. Tim Gray, Dr. Brant Pitre, Chris Stefanick, holy communion, catholic church, Catholic Faith, the augustine institute, catholic theology, catholic graduate school, christian theology

Id: 2nXh2JpZLf4

Length: 31min 29sec (1889 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 19 2023