10/27/09

Life After Death: The Evidence

Dinesh D'Souza’s most recent book is entitled, Life After Death: The Evidence.

Let us consider a description provided by Human Events – Book Services.



This may be a good addendum to Gary R. Habermas and James Porter Moreland’s book Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality.



Here is the description of Life After Death: The Evidence:

Is death the end? That's the ultimate question that has preoccupied mankind from the beginning of time to the present. And in truth, there is no more important question in life -- it is the one issue that makes every other issue trivial, for death is the great wrecking ball that destroys everything. But does anything lie beyond that great disruption, that terrible dissolution? Bestselling author Dinesh D'Souza answers that question with a resounding "yes." In his new blockbuster, Life After Death: The Evidence, he offers solid proof that death is not the end -- and shows why the rational side of this debate is the side that believes in the afterlife, while those clinging to blind faith are the ones who say that the end of this life is the extinguishing of all human existence.

Surprisingly enough, unlike many books about the afterlife, Life After Death makes no appeal at all to religious faith, divine revelation, or sacred texts. Instead, D'Souza (author of What's So Great About Christianity) makes a powerful and unique case by drawing on some of the most persuasive new theories and trends in physics, evolutionary biology, science, philosophy, and psychology. As he does so, D'Souza shows why the atheist critique of immortality is irrational -- and demonstrates that to believe in life after death is to affirm reason at its most fundamental level.

Life After Death makes three distinct and eye-opening arguments for life after death: one from neuroscience, one from philosophy, and one from morality. Each of these arguments is decisive by itself; collectively, they offer a convincing legal brief for the afterlife. D'Souza does not prove life after death beyond a reasonable doubt, but he meets the civil standard of proving his case by a preponderance of the evidence -- and also shows why it is good for us to believe in life after death even in the absence of complete certainty. Most compellingly of all, D'Souza provides a case study -- the only one in history -- that shows how life after death isn't just a future prospect, but has already happened for a single individual, thereby opening up a stunning new possibility: not just life after death, but eternal life right now.

The assertion that death is not the end is a factual claim, insists D'Souza; it can be reasonably assessed. Life After Death: a solidly argued case for the truth of the afterlife, and a ringing affirmation of how life after death can give depth and significance to this life, a path to happiness, and a reason for hope.



Exploring the afterlife with Dinesh D'Souza:

- How our culture, which prides itself on its open- mindedness and candor, shows an intense antipathy to facing the greatest of all human questions

- Why the common feature of all scientific hypotheses developed in order to explain the origin of life is the avoidance of miracles and supernatural explanations

- The test of a good theory: not only the validity of its reasoning but also whether it helps to explain things that would otherwise remain mysterious

- Science and the scientific method: its little-noted but all-important "blind spot"

- The remarkable implications of the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe

- The prevailing outlook of elites in the Britain and America for the past couple of hundred years -- and how it clouds our understanding of basic and quite obvious truths that support the reality of life after death

- The one way to give a natural explanation of the fine- tuned universe -- an explanation that, not surprisingly, some leading scientists have enthusiastically advanced

- Dualism: why it is gaining new respect and new adherents among philosophers and scientists

- Reincarnation? Why some people hold so tenaciously to this idea -- and why it ultimately must be rejected by reasonable people

- The two most widely held contemporary theories of materialism -- and why each fails to account for crucial and incontrovertible facts

- How atheists who insist that life after death is a religious concept may be surprised to discover that it is also a philosophical idea widely discussed in the fifth century B.C.

- Near death experiences: they don't prove life after death, but they do suggest it is possible

- Near death research: how it has faced derision and even ferocious attack from various quarters -- including, surprisingly, attack and derision from religious believers who might be expected to welcome this empirical support for one of the central premises of their faith

- How the progression of evolution on earth shows an unmistakable trajectory from matter to mind

- Why all evolutionary attempts to explain morality ultimately miss the point, seeking to explain morality but even at their best explaining what is not morality at all

- The odd form of materialism that does not completely rule out the possibility of life after death
How several of the greatest ideas and institutions of Western civilization were shaped by a firmly held vision of transcendence and life after death

- Why even the four-dimensional world of space and time envisioned by Einstein may be part of a larger multidimensional world, several of whose dimensions are hidden from us

- How the existence of moral values that stand athwart our animal nature presupposes the reality of cosmic justice, achieved not in this life but in another life beyond the grave

- How the concepts of eternity and life after death, far from being hostile to life and civilization as the atheists allege, have in fact shaped some our greatest and most beneficial social and political ideals, ideals that are shared by religious and secular people alike

- Four clear benefits provided by belief in the afterlife

- Four concrete facts in the accounts of the resurrection of Jesus Christ that have to be accounted for by anyone attempting to deny the resurrection

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