COMMENTARY:

THIS WEEK'S SPECIAL: TO THE REV. DR. BILLY GRAHAM, - so, you provocatively stated that there is no scientific evidence for the afterlife? :

Question sent to Billy Graham by T.McD: "Can you give me even one reason to believe in life after death? I think all the evidence is on the side of those who believe this life is all there is. As far as I'm concerned, we might as well live it up and make the most of it while we can. How would you respond?" -- T.McD. (see article)

BILLY GRAHAM'S ANSWER: "Recently, Christians celebrated Easter -- and the strongest reason I can give you for believing in life after death is what took place on that first Easter: the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead ... and if someone died, and then came back to life to tell us if there was anything beyond the grave. Anything else would be speculation."

VICTOR'S COMMENT ON Rev. Graham's answer: With respect Reverend, are you not being wilfully negligent when you do not even read and study the easily accessible empirical evidence for the afterlife? If you read the critical empirical evidence for the afterlife you would not have stated, as you did, "if someone died, and then came back to life to tell us if there was anything beyond the grave. Anything else would be speculation.

There is NO speculation at all. People have been coming back from the dead for hundreds of years and only now SCIENCE - is showing where, when, how and why those who crossed over are coming back to tell us all about the afterlife!

Is it because science now is making your religious, personal blind-faith beliefs obsolete that you do not want to study the afterlife scientific evidence? If you did, then the onus would shift onto you to tell the world how, where and why the scientific evidence cannot be accepted. But you have not done that. Are you then not wilfully and deliberately misleading the people?

Accordingly, let me remind you of some of the scientists who over a hundred years, after investigating the afterlife, accepted the existence of the afterlife and the paranormal - and accepted that those who crossed over communicate with us. Some of the early scientists and empiricists mentioned below investigated the afterlife using Scientific Method - with no religion, with no beliefs, no subjectivty - and they communicated with the risen 'dead'!. Science now states that ALL people are resurrected on dying - not just Jesus.

Rise above your deeply entrenched religious prejudice
Billy to liberate your mind from gross theological errors about the afterlife. Have the moral courage to read the empirical evidence for the afterlife. Hear for yourself what those from the afterlife are telling us. Have the fortitudte, the strength and motivation to open your eyes to the truth -the WHOLE truth - because the truth shall make you really free!.

Examine for yourself the evidence of just some of the most brilliant scientsts who ever walked on this planet earth:

SIR WILLIAM BARRETT, (1844-1925) – Professor of physics at the Royal College of Science in Dublin for 37 years, “I’m absolutely convinced of the fact that those who once lived on earth can and do communicate with us. It is hardly possible to convey to the inexperienced an adequate idea of the strength and cumulative force of the evidence (for the afterlife).”

Dr. Robert Hare (1751-1858) – An emeritus professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania and world-renowned inventor : " I sincerely believe that I have communicated with the spirits of my parents, sister, brother, and dearest friends, and likewise with the spirits of the illustrious Washington and other worthies of the spirit world; that I am by them commissioned, under their auspices, to teach truth and to expose error."

Professor James J. Mapes (1806-1866) – A professor of chemistry and natural philosophy at the National Academy of Design in New York and later at the American Institute, “spirits can and do communicate with mortals, and in all cases evince a desire to elevate and advance those they commune with."

Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) – Co-originator with Charles Darwin of the natural selection theory of evolution: " My position is that the phenomena of communicating with those who crossed over - in their entirety do not require further confirmation. They are proved quite as well as facts are proved in other sciences."

Sir William Crookes (1832-1919) – A physicist and chemist, the most decorated scientist in his time. He discovered the element thallium and was a pioneer in radioactivity. " “It is quite true that a connection has been set up between this world and the next.”

Dr. James Hyslop (1854 -1920) was a professor of logic and ethics at Columbia University before becoming a full-time psychical researcher in 1902. In 1904, he organized the American Institute for Scientific Research, which was to be devoted to the study of abnormal psychology and psychical research. Although initially skeptical, Hyslop came to believe in spirit communication and the survival of consciousness at death.
“I have been talking with my (dead) father, my brother, my uncles... Whatever supernormal powers we may be pleased to attribute to (the medium) Mrs. Piper's secondary personalities, it would be difficult to make me believe that these secondary personalities could have thus completely reconstituted the mental personality of my dead relatives...”

Sir Oliver Lodge (1851-1940) – Professor of physics at University College in Liverpool, England and later principal at the University of Birmingham, Lodge achieved world fame for his pioneering work in electricity, including the radio and spark plug. " I tell you with all my strength of the conviction which I can muster that we do persist, that people still continue to take an interest in what is going on, that they know far more about things on this earth than we do, and are able from time to time to communicate with us…I do not say it is easy, but it is possible, and I have conversed with my friends just as I can converse with anyone in this audience now."

Professor Camille Flammarion (1842-1925) – A world renowned astronomer, Flammarion founded the French Astronomical Society and was known for his study of Mars. He was a pioneer in the use of balloon to study the stars. He investigated psychic phenomena, including mediumship, for more than 50 years. " I do not hesitate to affirm my conviction, based on personal examination of the subject, that any man who declares the phenomena to be impossible is one who speaks without knowing what he is talking about."

Dr. Charles Richet (1850-1909) – Professor of physiology at the University of Paris Medical School, Richet was considered a world authority on nutrition in health and in disease. He won the Nobel Prize in 1913 for his work on allergic reactions. While convinced of the reality of mediumship, he remained publicly agnostic toward survival. According to Sir Oliver Lodge, his good friend, Richet privately accepted survival before his death. " It seems to me the facts are undeniable. I am convinced that I have been present at realities."

Dr. Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) – Professor of psychology at the University of Turin and Inspector of Asylums for the Insane in Italy, Lombroso was a pioneering criminologist. " I am ashamed and grieved at having opposed with so much tenacity the possibility of psychic facts – the facts exist and I boast of being a slave to facts. There can be no doubt that genuine psychical phenomena are produced by intelligences totally independent of the psychic and the parties present at the sittings."

Dr. Enrico Morselli (1852-1929) – An Italian neurologist, Director of the Clinic of Nervous and Mental Disease at the University of Genoa. "I was a bitter skeptic with regard to the objective reality of the phenomena. Today, furnished with an experience, after long and mature reflections on what I have seen and touched with my hand, I have changed my belief."

Dr. Gustave Geley (1868-1924) – Professor of medicine at the University of Lyons, he gave up his practice as a teacher and physician in 1919 to become director of the Institute Metaphysique International in Paris to investigate mediumship." [The facts revealed necessitate] the complete overthrow of materialistic physiology, [and that] the materialistic conception of the universe is false and cannot be reconciled with our present biological knowledge."

Dr. Julian Ochorowicz (1850-1917) – Professor of psychology and philosophy at the University of Warsaw:
" I found I had done a great wrong to men who had proclaimed new truths at the risk of their positions. When I remember that I branded as a fool that fearless investigator, Crookes, the inventor of the radiometer, because he had the courage to assert the reality of psychic phenomena and to subject them to scientific tests, and when I also recollect that I used to read his articles thereon in the same stupid style, regarding him as crazy, I am ashamed, both of myself and others, and I cry from the very bottom of my heart. ‘Father, I have sinned against the Light.’”

Dr. Carl A. Wickland (1861-1945) -- A member of the Chicago Medical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and director of the National Psychological Institute of Los Angeles:" Spirit obsession is a fact – a perversion of a natural law – and is amply demonstrable. This has been proven hundreds of times by causing the supposed insanity or aberration to be temporarily transferred from the victim to a psychic sensitive who is trained for the purpose, and by this method ascertain the cause of the psychosis to be an ignorant or mischievous spirit, whose identity may frequently be verified."

Dr. T. Glen Hamilton (1877-1935) – A graduate of Manitoba Medical College, Hamilton had a private medical practice while also teaching clinical surgery at Winnipeg General Hospital. He became interested in psychic phenomena in 1918 and conducted extensive studies on Canadian mediums. " …we hold the survival theory to be valid in accounting for every fact known in regard to the trance personalities. It accounts for their stated opinions that they were indeed deceased (discarnate) individuals. It admits of the possibility that they, as discarnate persons, shared some manner of inter-communication, which enabled them to plan, to co-operate, and to commit themselves to organized activities in the séance room, activities which extended over a period of many years."

Dr. Robert Crookall (1890-1969) – After taking his Ph.D., Crookall lectured at Aberdeen University before joining the staff of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, specializing in coal-forming plants. He resigned from his geological work in 1952 to devote the rest of his life to psychical research. "The whole of the available evidence is explicable on the hypothesis of the survival of the human soul in a Soul Body. There is no longer a ‘deadlock’ or ‘stalemate’ on the question of survival. On the contrary, survival is as well established as the theory of evolution."

Dr. Raynor C. Johnson (1901-1987) – A physicist, Johnson was educated at Oxford and received his doctorate from the University of London. He lectured in physics at King’s College, University of London, before becoming master of Queen’s College at the University of Melbourne in Australia. " For myself, I can only say that my intuition, such as it is, supports (Frederic) Myers, and my attempt to evaluate the data of psychical research and form a critical judgment leads me to conclude that if survival of death is not rigorously proven, it is nevertheless established as of that high order or probability which, for practical purposes, can be taken as the same thing."

Dr. Gardner Murphy (1895-1979) – While at Harvard, Murphy accepted the Hodgson Memorial Fund research grant. He served as president of the American Society for Psychical Research for 20 years. He taught psychology at Columbia University and served as chairman of the psychology department at City College of New York. " It is the autonomy, the purposiveness, the cogency, above all the individuality, of the sources of the messages, that cannot be by-passed. Struggle though I may as a psychologist, for forty-five years, to try to find a ‘naturalistic’ and ‘normal’ way of handling this material, I cannot do this even when using all the information we have about human chicanery and all we have about the far-flung telepathic and clairvoyant abilities of some gifted sensitives. The case looks like communication with the deceased."

Gary Schwartz, Ph.D. (1944 - ) After receiving his doctorate from Harvard University, Dr. Schwartz served as a professor of psychology and psychiatry at Yale University. " I can no longer ignore the data [on research into the survival of consciousness] and dismiss the words [coming through mediums]. They are as real as the sun, the trees, and our television sets, which seem to pull pictures out of the air. "

George Meek ( 1919?-1999) “For the first time in 8,000 years of recorded history, it can now be said with certainty that our mind, memory, personality and soul will survive physical death.”

 

Dr Harold Puthoff (1936- ) physicist and current Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Austin, Texas. He has made significant contribution towards empirically establishing the validity of psi particularly in the field of “remote viewing”. This was a term he jointly coined to describe a form of psychic functioning historically known as clairvoyance.

PROF. Erlendur Haraldsson Professor of Psychology at the University of Iceland. Has done psychic research into life after death - apparitions, children who speak of a previous life, Icelandic mediums, deathbed visions and communicating with intelligences from the afterlife.

Dr Claude Swanson has collated the "best evidence" illustrating the inadequacy of our present scientific paradigm. In his book, The Synchronized Universe, he describes scientifically controlled remote viewing and ESP experiments, demonstrations of long-range healing, psychokinesis (mind over matter), scientifically controlled experiments in levitation, teleportation and out of body phenomena (OBE). He outlines numerous examples of these strange forces being demonstrated under rigorous scientific conditions, with odds of millions or even billions to one against chance. Dr Swanson argues that there is a need for a new, truly "unified field theory" which can explain and understand both science and consciousness.

Professor Ernsk Senkowski after doing intensive paranormal and afterlife research for over twenty years repeatedly obtained positive paranormal and 'afterlife' results. His book INSTRUMENTAL TRANSCOMUNICATION: the full German version.

Professor Russell Targ is a physicist and author who pioneered the development of the laser. He was also co-founded the Stanford Research Institute's investigation into psychic abilities in the 1970s and 1980s. He authored numerous books suggesting that the mind itself reaches to the far ends of the universe and that it is this "non-local" quality, rather than any particular mechanism, that accounts for the remarkable data of parapsychology.

Professor Fred Alan Wolf , "There is evidence that suggests the existence of a non-material, non-physical universe that has a reality even though it might not as yet be clearly perceptible to our senses and scientific instrumentation. When we consider out-of-body experiences, shamanic journeys and lucid dream states, though they cannot be replicated in the true scientific sense, they also point to the existence of non-material dimensions of reality."

Ron Pearson, “For the first time the reader will now be able to judge whether the long overdue paradigm-shift in physics is made possible, so that the survival of death and the entire spectrum of the so-called ‘paranormal’ can now be accepted, even by scientists, as potentially real effects.”

Professor Amit Goswami former Professor of Physics at the Institute of Theoretical Sciences at the University of Oregon. He is currently a senior resident researcher at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. His book Physics of the Soul--The Quantum Book Of Living, Dying, Reincarnation And Immortality defines consciousness, not materiality, as the primary reality.

Professor David Fontana Professor of Transpersonal Psychology at Liverpool John Moores University, published a scholarly 500 page book called Is There An Afterlife which reviews some of the evidence for the afterlife accumulated during more than one hundred and fifty years of systematic research.

Professor Archie Roy Professor Emeritus of Astronomy in the University of Glasgow, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, The Royal Astronomical Society and the British Interplanetary Society. For the best part of thirty years he has also been passionately interested in psychical research and helped to found PRISM (Psychical Research Involving Selected Mediums) which encourages, guides and funds research work with mediums. He has worked with Tricia Robertson, vice-president of the Scottish SPR, on research work which validated mediumship. Together they have published three papers on mediumship with the Society for Psychical Research.In the Introduction to Professor Fontana's book (above) Professor Archie Roy points out that as yet most mainstream scientists are simply unaware of the evidence for the afterlife. They have never done psychic research and have never read the evidence; but they are often hostile to it because they think it challenges their scientific world view.

For more scientists and the afterlife click on BOOK top right - chapter 2- Respected Scientists who Investigated and on chapter 25 -Quantum Physics and the Afterlife and Michael Tymn's Distinguished Researchers who found evidence of survival.

Further, I urge the Rev. Billy Graham to study my own hitherto unrebutted twenty three areas of objective afterlife evidence: click on BOOK top right.

A GIANT OF AFTERLIFE SCIENCE: SIR OLIVER LODGE: a statement which needs an answer: ‘Victor, you are relying on those with high status, such as Sir Oliver Lodge to persuade the uninformed about the afterlife?

Victor: And what’s wrong with that? When someone such as Sir Oliver Lodge, one of the most intelligent and most brilliant people who ever walked this planet earth and as a scientist after he investigated the afterlife he fully accepted that the afterlife exists. He told us why he accepted the afterlife. His qualifications are typical of some of the brilliant scientists who accepted the afterlife after they investigated the afterlife: Sir Oliver Lodge Fellow of the Royal Society; D.Sc.(Lon); Hon. D.Sc.(Oxon); Hon.Sc.D (Cantab.); Hon.LL.D (Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Adelaide, Toronto); Hon. M.A. (Birmingham); Mem.Inst. Elec. Engineers; Hon.Mem.Lit.Phil.Soc. (Manchester); Corr.Mem.Amer.Phil.Soc.(Philidelphia) Corr.Mem.Accad.Sci.dell’Istituto (Bolognia); Corr.Mem. Bataafsch Genoots (Rotterdam); Hon.Mem. Inst. Elec.Engineers;President of the Radio Society; Rumford Medallist of the Royal Society; Albert Medallist of the royal Society of Arts, as pioneer in Wireless Telegraphy; President of the Physical Society. President of the British Assn., President of the Rontgen Society. Professor of Physics University of Liverpool; Principal of the University of Birmingham.