Читать книгу The Case for an Afterlife - J. J. Jennings - Страница 3

Why publish another “afterlife” book?

A Google internet search for “afterlife books and articles” produced 3,480,000 results, so there’s already plenty of “afterlife” material out there.

The problem is, some of that material argues adamantly for an afterlife, while some of it argues adamantly against an afterlife.

It seems we can’t agree on what constitutes credible evidence of an afterlife. Take the readings given by mediums, for example. Some of us feel those readings provide bona fide evidence of an afterlife. Others of us say those readings are flawed because the mediums employ “hot” and “cold” reading techniques designed to convince their eager and cooperative clients that departed friends or relatives are in communication with them – even when they’re not.

To agree on what constitutes credible evidence, we must first agree on how we define “credible evidence”. We have to agree on the criteria for “credible evidence”.

However, there are different types of afterlife evidence – not just readings by mediums, but sightings of apparitions, bodily possessions, and past-life regressions, just to name a few – and the criteria to define what is credible are likely to vary by each type of evidence.

And that’s not all.The criteria selected by some of us to define a given type of “credible evidence” may not be rigorous enough to satisfy others of us.We need some way to agree on the sufficiency of the criteria – We need a way to decide whether the criteria are rigorous enough.

This book examines five different types of evidence in the published afterlife material, and offers a set of rigorous criteria for each type that hopefully is sufficient to qualify the evidence as either “credible” or “not credible”. Finally, the book proposes the scientific collection and qualification of even more credible evidence, of many types, in an attempt to establish what the afterlife is and is not.

If we can agree on the types of afterlife evidence to be considered, and if we can agree on our approaches for gathering and evaluating that evidence, then maybe we can come closer to agreeing on whether or not there is an afterlife, and what that afterlife may be like.

We’ll start in Chapter 1 with an overview of our current search approach within the afterlife material already published.

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