Dancing Past the Dark ~ distressing near-death experiences

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Darkness, light, and near-death experience revisited

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On the Wholeness of Darkness and Light

The essay below is being posted because it may be useful for newer readers. I wrote it in 1992 for the IANDS publication Vital Signs, so although regular readers of the blog will find nothing much new here, it may be of some mild historical interest. I have edited it slightly to remove anachronisms and simplify overly wordy writing.

A woman has written to say that she had heard about distressing near-death experiences at an IANDS conference. “It sounded weird,” she said. “Are these just nightmares?”

Well, the experiences appear to share something of the same space as the pleasurable NDEs, and they no doubt do sound weird; but then, so does just about everything in this field when looked at from the perspective of ordinary consciousness. Nevertheless, as we come closer to the fortieth anniversary of Raymond Moody’s first accounts of light-filled, love-filled, rapturous consciousness at the edge of death, it is clear that Life After Life touched a nerve that still quivers. [Read more…] about Darkness, light, and near-death experience revisited

Heaven, hell, and your home security system

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An intriguing new study suggests how religious belief can have measurable effect on secular society.

In recent years, research findings have indicated that individuals with strong religious faith are happier, have better health outcomes, and show greater flexibility during times of crisis than people without religious practice. But beyond individuals, on a broader social scale, how does religious belief matter?

Well, it turns out there’s a clear indication that the type of belief does make a difference beyond the individual. As reported in the June 2012 issue of PLoS ONE, the online journal of the Public Library of Science, there is a direct relationship between crime rates and the degree to which citizens believe in hell.

Small-scale laboratory testing has shown that people who believe in hell cheat less than those who believe in heaven. At the University of Oregon, psychologist Azim F. Shariff wondered if those beliefs might carry over to influence society at large, and with statistician Mijke Rhemtulla at the University of Kansas he went looking for an answer.

The two analyzed large datasets from 67 countries, with a total of 143,197 people, regarding belief in hell, belief in heaven, belief in God, and religious attendance. The data about belief were analyzed relative to those for the ten crimes for which the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime had reliable statistics: homicide, robbery, rape, kidnapping, assault, theft, drug crime, auto theft, burglary, and human trafficking. Shariff reports,

As predicted, rates of belief in heaven and hell had significant, unique, and opposing effects on crime rates.

Whereas belief in hell predicted lower crime rates, belief in heaven predicted higher crime rates, both at the same level of significance, p<.001.

The report continues: “Controlling for the effect of belief in heaven, a 1 SD [standard deviation, a measure of confidence] increase in belief in hell resulted in an almost 2 SD decrease in national crime rate; conversely, controlling for the effect of hell, a 1 SD increase in belief in heaven resulted in an almost 2 SD increase in national crime rate. Analyzing each crime individually revealed the same significant pattern of effects for 8 of the 10 individual crimes (kidnapping and human trafficking excepted).”

You can read the entire article here, with its detailed description of methodology and statistical findings.

What are we to make of this uncomfortable information? Should it surprise us? Clearly, although this is likely not to be a popular finding except in conservative religious settings, the psychological and moral implications need thought. Will our personal security be at risk as more and more people claim to be “spiritual but not religious”? Is a higher crime rate merely the inconvenient price of a more compassionate spirituality? And just what is the intersection between psychology, sociology, and theology among post-moderns who prefer to focus on individuation as central?

Plenty to think about.

New perspective on heaven and hell

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For any readers who are evangelical Christians, or progressive Christians, or recovering Christians, or even if you’re not Christian at all but are interested in people’s finding new ways of thinking about the subject of hell, here’s a great opportunity.

New Testament scholar and P.OST blogger Andrew Perriman has collected a series of his thoughtful posts into book form, Hell and Heaven in Narrative Perspective, which is now available for well under $4 on Kindle. (No Nook yet, though he’s looking into it; but Kindle can be read on any computer.) Definitely worth a look. Heck, at this price, just buy it and read at your leisure.

The only thing I am proselytizing for is openness to new ideas! See Perriman’s quote below.

Perriman says:

Being a collection of blog posts the book is academically lightweight, far from comprehensive, and suffers from many of the characteristic vices of the medium. Maybe that’s all to the good. In any case, I think it puts forward a pretty coherent case for reading the texts as interpretations of historical outcomes rather than as data for general theories about a personal afterlife.