The Paranormal Evidence for Morality
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In Charlottesville, Virginia, within the hallowed halls of the University of Virginia, there exists the peculiar Division of Perceptual Studies. DOPS researches questions some consider outside the domain of a respectable university. They are interested in the academic investigation of reincarnation, psychics, altered states of consciousness, and near-death experiences (NDEs). DOPS holds that mainstream science has presumptuously concluded that the mind simply is the brain and therefore, by the force of mere assumption, ruled out the existence of the so-called “paranormal.” That is, according to the Oxford Dictionary, an adjective “denoting events or phenomena such as telekinesis or clairvoyance that are beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding.”
If we think of the paranormal as “beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding,” then a robust vision of morality would also fit into that category. After all, objective moral values are usually thought to have some transcendent, otherworldly ground. Maybe, as some moral philosophers suggest, the Good exists in some heavenly and immaterial realm. J. L. Mackie, an atheist philosopher, notes that from his perspective, objective moral values would be “of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe.” [1] Perhaps, then, Unsolved Mysteries should feature, along with their UFO and ghost stories, a reading from Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals? That would be a truly bone-chilling episode, indeed.
Morality may also be broadly paranormal in another sense. Morality can also imply immortality and the existence of a soul—life beyond death. This idea is first developed philosophically by Immanuel Kant. David Baggett and Jerry Walls give a concise summary of Kant’s motivation for believing in life after death:
Since perfection obviously can’t be attained in this life, and because of the Kantian deontic principle ought implies can, death must not be the end. We must be able to continue the quest subsequent to death. This posthumous dimension is Kant’s argument for immortality.[2]
Kant’s suggestion is that the moral law demands that we keep it perfectly, that we be fully and finally transformed people who live consistently under the moral law. But there’s a couple of problems. First, humans just can’t meet the moral demand on their own and, second, they die before they can meet it. So, if the moral life is truly possible, life must continue after death and some divine assistance must be provided in order to be morally transformed.
Others, like C. S. Lewis, think that morality implies everlasting life. It is where the Good can finally be attained and where injustices are at long last made right. In heaven, we find “Love Himself, and Good Himself” and we are therefore happy, says Lewis.[3] And all the pain we have known will “sink out of sight.”[4] Of course, Lewis here thinks of God as the Good, but that is not the primary point. The Good, whatever form it may take, cannot be wholly found here, and so it must be somewhere else. If the moral life is truly possible, if we will truly have the Good, then we must continue to exist in that somewhere else where it can be had, where morality and rationality are finally reconciled.
This makes morality and the paranormal partners in a couple of ways. First, a robust morality is “strange” in Mackie’s terms, and beyond the realm of science, just like the paranormal. Second, certain paranormal phenomena, like NDEs and ghosts, implies that life continues after death. Since they’re partners in this limited sense, it may make one wonder whether the investigation of the paranormal can give any help to morality and the moral argument. I think so.
DOPS argues that some are closed off to the possibility of the paranormal because of certain epistemological and worldview commitments. If we assume that physicalism is true, then we can know without doing any actual research that people cannot survive the death of their bodies. People just are their bodies, so when the body dies, the mind also ceases to exist. But what does the evidence show?
Here we must tread carefully, but it may be worth the trip considering the potential rewards. Perhaps the most evidential and fruitful category of DOPS’s research concerns NDEs. DOPS and other researchers are primarily interested in “veridical NDEs.” These are cases where there is strong testimonial evidence that a person has survived their own brain death and, on occasion, have experiences outside their physical body. That testimony usually includes verifiable information that the NDE experiencer could not have known if she were in her body and unconscious. Here is a good example from Gary Habermas:
For instance, in a well-documented incident, a young girl had nearly drowned, not registering a pulse for 19 minutes. The emergency room physician observed that he “stood over Katie’s lifeless body in the intensive care unit.” A CT scan showed that she had massive brain swelling, and she was without a gag reflex, while being “profoundly comatose.” Dr. Melvin Morse reported, “When I first saw her, her pupils were fixed and dilated, meaning that irreversible brain damage had most likely occurred.” Her breathing was performed artificially and she was given very little chance to survive.
But only three days later, the girl surprisingly revived and made a full recovery. Katie began repeating an incredible wealth of specific facts regarding the emergency room, her resuscitation, and even physical descriptions of the two physicians. Morse confirmed that, “a child with Katie’s symptoms should have the absence of any brain function and therefore should comprehend nothing.”
Katie recalled these recent details for almost an hour. Further, during her comatose state, she said that an angel named Elizabeth allowed her to view her family at home. Katie correctly reported very specific details concerning the clothing and positions of each family member, identified a popular rock song that her sister listened to, observed her father, and then watched while her mother cooked dinner. She even correctly identified the food: roast chicken and rice. Later, she shocked her parents by relating details from just a few days before (see Melvin Morse and Paul Perry, Closer to the Light (N.Y.: Random House, 1990), 3-14 and Transformed by the Light (N.Y.: Random House, 1992), 22-23).[5]
And there are many more cases like this. The DOPS website provides a list of several other academic and popular publications. Capturing Christianity recently hosted an interview with Dr. Eben Alexander, who had his own NDE. Netflix recently produced a documentary series, Surviving Death, with one episode devoted to recounting and evaluating some of these cases.[6]
So, investigation of paranormal NDEs has yielded a boon of verifiable testimonial evidence which strongly suggests that we do, in fact, survive the death of our own bodies. And that is highly consistent with the intimations of morality; specifically, that we are immortal and that there is something beyond this life. Morality may be strange, but sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction.
[1] J. L. Mackie, Ethics, Kindle location 464.
[2] David Baggett and Jerry Walls, The Moral Argument: A History, p. 23.
[3] C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, Kindle location 1820.
[4] C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, Kindle location 1820.
[5] Gary Habermas, What Can Be Learned from Near-Death Experiences?, The Table. https://cct.biola.edu/can-learned-near-death-experiences/
[6] For those interested, I would recommend watching the whole series Surviving Death. It examines NDEs as well as psychics, seances, and other paranormal phenomena. I recommend it in part because it shows the difference in the evidential quality between NDEs and other paranormal phenomena.
The Managing Editor of MoralApologetics.com, Jonathan has been a vital part of the Moral Apologetics team since its inception. Currently, he serves as adjunct instructor of philosophy for Grand Canyon University and Liberty University. Prior to these positions, he was ordained as a minister and served as spiritual life director. He is the author or co-author of several articles on metaethics, theology, and history of philosophy. With a Master’s in Global Apologetics and a graduate of Biola’s Master’s program in philosophy, he is currently in the throes of finishing his doctoral dissertation in which he extends a four-fold moral argument from mere theism to a distinctively Christian picture of God. Jonathan, his wife Sara, and their two children presently live in Lynchburg, Virginia. JonathanRPruitt.com
