Bloom is completely ignoring the evidence in four published, peer-reviewed, long-term hospital studies of death and near death experiences (the first of which was published in the British Medical Journal, The Lancet, in 2001), all of which corroborate, with practically identical results, that there apparently IS some sort of phenomenon of detachable consciousness which occurs in about 20% of people at death, and follows very predictable lines.
Does this "prove" God and the afterlife?
No.
But it does demonstrate that the concept of body and consciousness being separable is not merely a fantasy. It's empirical, peer-reviewed medical evidence that it appears to happen at the point of death in about a fifth of people (the others didn't remember anything).
Now, of course, people have been at the point of death and then revived since time immemorial. This is not a NEW experience to mankind. What is new is that modern medicine gives us about 20,000 cases of it, whereas only fortuitous happenstance (or divine intervention) allowed someone at the point of death, or perhaps even in cardiac arrest without breathing, etc., to miraculously recover in pre-medical days.
The detachable soul idea, he suggests, is an error of logic.
I would submit that, no, it is actually a rational concept based on empirical experience of human beings across the centuries. There was absolutely nothing surprising in those four Near-Death Experience studies, other than the fact that hard medical science could actually document the
reported "symptom", and that it would statistically be the same in four separate peer reviewed studies.
Detachable consciousness in extremis has good, peer-reviewed, medical scientific support which does not require any religious faith to read and observe. It's apparently a fact of nature. That it's not SUPRISING to religious people may demonstrate that those who inspired the religion experienced these things themselves, or it may just possibly be that this "God" that people go to in these experiences is, uh, actually GOD, and that the religious intuitions aren't just myths, but are actually based on true experiences that mankind has recorded and taken into account since the dawn of time.
Obviously that concept is unacceptable to someone who has dogmatically decided that there CAN'T be any truth in religion or concepts of the soul. But to the rest of us, who just want to know the truth wherever it may lie, there is no good reason to favor the speculation of a guy who is opposed to the very concept of a detachable consciousness over four peer-reviewed, controlled, long-term hospital studies of Near-Death Experiences which produce statistically very similar results and corroborate each other's findings.
The mechanism for this is baffling. It is not medically explicable at the present time. But denying that it happens at all: that is not science. Science is looking at the empirical data, verifying that it was prepared using proper standards and peer reviewed. These four hospital studies were. The BMJ/Lancet wouldn't have published something that controversial if the science were not adequate.
They wouldn't have published it either if the doctors had written: "This proves the soul" or any such non-scientific nonsense as that. The studies do not PROVE anything. But they provide empirical support, pretty good empirical support, for the notion of some sort of effect of detachable consciousness at death.
And the existence of these four studies, the oldest now 5 years old, means that this speculator on the nature of human psychology has not properly researched his work, because he did not take these studies into account.
Ignoring evidence because it does not support one's theory is not science.
Personally, these studies convince me that there probably is a soul, and probably is an afterlife. I will not state that they PROVE it, because they don't. But one can certainly infer it from them. They don't prove Christianity or any other religion, but they do indicate that religious belief in the afterlife is not made up out of wholecloth. People DO experience these things, and have. We have reports going back through history of exceptional cases, and they comport with what the thousands of modern NDE's show. Something is going on.
WHERE, precisely (in the head our outside) or HOW is not knowable at this point.
But one cannot say, as this fellow has, that people who believe in a separation of soul and body are in ERROR, or that they are CONFUSED. They may very well be RIGHT.
Science gives evidence that allows a colorable inference that something like that certainly SEEMS to happen, in 20% of people.
The fellow who is making the hypothesis states a case that is weakened by empirical medical science. He should check his facts before he pontificates.
Afterlife bump!
Don't get me wrong - I'm a firm believer in God and firm believer in the afterlife.
However I read a treatise a few years ago by a doctor who studied Near-Death expereinces and he said that the people who experienced them were merely reliving the birth experience: going through the dark tunnel, coming out to a bright white light where people were waiting for them.
I hope and pray that he is wrong - but his premise sounded all too reasonable.
We'll all find out one day - but it will be too late to come back and tell anyone.
It happened to me when I was 17 and a nurse gave me a shot meant for the patient in the next room. All I saw was a heavy white fog rise up from the floor until it blocked my view. I could still hear, I felt myself fall and hit the floor (although it didn't hurt). I could hear my mother and the nurse screaming for the doctor and I was aware of him pounding on my chest - although again I couldn't really feel anything. I finally came to - the doctor told me that my heart had stopped for several minutes and they though I was a goner. Other than the white fog, I didn't see anything or anyone.
What REALLY scares me are people who experienced a near-death situation where they went somewhere NOT so pleasant.
I heard about a suicide case that said he went to a crowded room filled with other people walking around in circles talking to themselves and bumping into each other without noticing anyone but themselves. He figured that was the hell that suiciders go to - since they were so selfish as to kill themselves, then they spend an eternity with other people so selfish they don't pay any attention to anything around them.
Pretty scary.