Can Science Show the Soul Survives Death? Join My New Courses

Jimmy Akin (0:00)

Howdy folks, I want to let you know about two courses I'm going to be teaching this fall for the Rhine Education Center, and they start very soon. The first is a brand new course on near-death experiences in cases of the reincarnation type. It's never been taught before. It begins Tuesday, October 6th, and it meets every Tuesday for eight weeks from two to four p.m. Eastern. Near-death experiences are one of the most important lines of scientific evidence. We have that we survive death. People who have been clinically dead with no heartbeat at all have come back and reported that they left their bodies, watched what was happening around them and entered another realm. In some cases, they've reported things that they had no natural way of knowing that turned out to be true. We'll look at famous cases like Pam Reynolds, the Dentures Man and Maria Shue, and what researchers have found from Raymond Moody to the studies currently being done in hospitals today.

We'll talk about the fact that not all near-death experiences are pleasant. Some are distressing, which is an important part of the data. We live in a culture where many people have been told that science has shown that we're nothing but our brains, and when the brain dies, we're gone. But, near-death research is one of the places where that claim runs into serious trouble. And this isn't new. Pope St. Gregory the Great preserved accounts of people who died, revived and then described what they'd seen. And St. Bede the Venerable told the story of a man who died one night, revived the next morning and spent the rest of his life as a monk because of what he'd experienced.

In the second half of the course, we'll turn to cases of the reincarnation type. These are primarily cases of young children who start talking about a previous life, sometimes given names, places and details that are later checked and found to match a real person. The research was pioneered by Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia and we'll look at some of the strongest cases like those of James Leininger and Ryan Hammons. These cases are real and need to be explained, but what explanations are there?

Does it have to be reincarnation or could it be something else? We'll look at all the possibilities with clarity and balance.

The second course I'll be teaching this fall is Introduction to Parapsychology. It begins Wednesday, October 7th from 7 to 9 p.m. Eastern and it meets for eight weeks. Parapsychology is the branch of science that studies psychic functioning and the survival of bodily death. That means that the course covers evidence that scientists have found regarding experiences involving telepathy, remote viewing and precognition. People are often amazed at the results of the laboratory tests parapsychologists have done on these abilities, with some statistics professors saying that these abilities have now been proved as much as anything else in science has been. We'll also talk about the spontaneous psychic experiences people have, including phenomena like apparitions, hauntings and poltergeists. And those aren't new either. In fact, doctors of the church, like St. Thomas Aquinas and Pope St. Gregory the Great, held that what we would call psychic functioning does exist.

Both courses are taught online. Every week, I'll be delivering a lecture that you can watch on your phone, tablet or computer. And you don't even have to be present, because all the lectures are recorded so that you can watch them at your convenience. You're also welcome to audit either course. That is, you can just watch and enjoy the lectures for your own interest and information. Or you're also welcome to take them for a grade. Again, if you pass, which is not hard, they count towards one of the Rhine certificates in parapsychology. In fact, you can get a certificate signed by me for completing Introduction to Parapsychology. If you enjoy the mysteries that we cover on Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World, you'll find these courses fascinating. To learn more and sign up, just go to rhinedu.org.

That's R-H-I-N-E-E-D-U dot org. We'll have a link in the show notes or video description. Thank you so much, and I hope you can join me.