The Immortal Soul: A Response to Soul Sleep

Is there a way we can know if the soul persists beyond death? Perhaps the closest we can get to knowing without actually dying is Near-Death Experiences (NDEs). The term "near-death experience" was coined by author and physician Raymond Moody. In his book, Life After Life , Moody recounts the story of George G. Ritchie, who was a U.S. Army recruit in 1943 during World War II. George reportedly died of pneumonia and was declared clinically dead for about 9 minutes. During that time, he recounts leaving his body and encountering a being of light, among other things. He was told it wasn't his time to die and was later revived with an adrenaline injection. George G. Ritchie's story is considered one of the earliest "modern" NDEs, although NDEs are not new or novel but have been recorded in ancient texts for thousands of years. NDEs often have many commonalities among them, including: Having an out-of-body experience and seeing their own physical body apart from ...

Why did I write this blog? After the passing of my father, I began to reflect heavily on death and my own mortality. We live most of our lives trying to avoid the thought of death, but when we lose a loved one, we are forced to confront it. Death is something that is inescapable and touches each and every one of us at some point. It's part of the human experience. What happens when we die is one of life's big questions along with "Is there a God?" and "Why am I here?" My motivation in writing this blog was to try and answer that question to the best of my ability. There are a lot of ideas of what happens when we die. The materialist will say there is no life after death, that when your dead your dead. Buddhists and Hindus, among others, believe we have lived many lives and will be reincarnated. Mainstream Christians like myself believe in a life after death. Then there is the view that the soul "sleeps" until the resurrection of the dead. The latte...