Dante and Beatrice gaze upon the highest heavens, from Gustave Doré's illustrations to The Divine Comedy.
As we celebrate what's left of Labor Day weekend and wind down another brutal Texas summer here in the Lone Star State, a new movie promising miracles and paradise is making its way to local theaters.
Proof of Heaven is the purportedly true story of Eben Alexander, a neurologist who was brain dead for a week. During this time he "died and went to heaven" where he met with God, rode on divine butterflies standing in for angels, and even met his deceased sister. Fortunately for everyone including the good doctor, death, in this case, was temporary. The doctor was able to come back, reanimate his alleged corpse, and go on to write a best-selling book that has morphed into a movie about his experiences.
But a well-written Esquire magazine article from a couple of years ago is worth revisiting. It reduces these back-from-the grave claims to the usual near-death scenario that skeptics like me have to come to expect, once these wondrous tales are put under scrutiny. Join us below as we review why this experience is probably more akin to proof of life than proof of heaven.
Near-death experiences seemed to emerge in popular culture during the 1970s. They tend to share some similarities: The patient stops breathing or suffers cardiac arrest, they are technically dead, but then they go on to make a partial or total recovery and report seeing a white light along with feelings of warmth, acceptance, and serenity. Some say they were visited by dead relatives, angels, or even God[s]. Most of these sensations are consistent with oxygen starvation and a flood of fight-or-flight neurotransmitters like dopamine.
But in the case of Dr. Alexander, there wasn't even the near death part. Although his book states that he was in a deep coma, the Esquire writer found a treating doctor who said on the record her patient was never brain dead, and never in a coma. He was actually placed in a medically induced coma.
This is standard treatment for a patient in Dr. Alexander's condition. He was suffering from a life-threatening brain infection that had caused swelling, rendering him incoherent and combative. In other words, he was anesthetized and immediately intubated. Far from being in a brain dead state, his brain was instead being saved by the treatment. Over the next several days, his treating doctors brought him out of the deep anesthesia several times to check his response. Eventually, he was lucid enough to remain fully conscious and begin recovery. But the tracheal intubation brings up another odd conflict:
"Then, out of nowhere, I shouted three words. ... 'God, help me!' Everyone rushed over to the stretcher. By the time they got to me, I was completely unresponsive."
. . . What [Dr. Potter, treating M.D.] does remember is that she had intubated Alexander more than an hour prior to his departure from the emergency room, snaking a plastic tube down his throat, through his vocal cords, and into his trachea. Could she imagine her intubated patient being able to speak at all, let alone in a crystal-clear way? "No," she says.
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Esquire article really is a prime piece of investigative writing, and should be read in its entirety. The author carefully reviews Dr. Alexander's career, which was itself near death and on life support after he had made several jaw dropping blunders in the operating room. In one alleged instance, he operated on the wrong vertebra in a patient and then tried to edit the case file to conceal the mistake.
But it's unlikely that facts will deter those with a propensity to fully embrace these fanciful stories. What it boils down to is: We humans want to believe in life after death, and who wouldn't? Especially if it's an afterlife full of long-departed friends and family, where we're waited on hand and foot by godlets of various sorts, and watched over by a super God beaming out warmth and love like the sun.
Maybe there is such a thing. There could well be a heaven, and maybe even a hell. Or perhaps the universe has some other, unfathomable trick of fate planned for us humans. But based on the facts in this case, you won't find much proof of heaven in Dr. Alexander's story, or in any other on-the-record near death experience. Not unless you can suspend all critical thinking facilities, opting instead for pleasant delusion and comforting fiction. That's a combination Dr. Eben Alexander is clearly riding all the way to the bank.