BOOK REVIEW: A brief for ongoing consciousness

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By John R. Coyne Jr.

LIFE AFTER DEATH: THE EVIDENCE

By Dinesh D'Souza

Regnery, $27.95, 269 pages

Reviewed by John R. Coyne Jr.

In the realm of ideas and public discourse, where public policy often incubates, a prevailing ethos holds that certain general propositions and theories are acceptable, others not. If we dissent too vigorously, contemporary defenders of high-church liberalism descend on us like old-school Jesuit inquisitors on heretics or old-line Marxist professors on students questioning the validity of the theory of displacement of matter.

Among today's heresies guaranteed to arouse the fury of what Dinesh D'Souza calls "the Enlightened People":

Just as global warming is only a theory, yet to be proved (the reviewer's observation, not the author's), the theory of evolution is also just that - a theory, also short on proof (the cruder skeptics among us are still waiting for that missing link); the argument from design for the existence of a Creator certainly makes at least as much sense as the theory that aliens brought life to Earth - a proposition, as Mr. D'Souza points out, to which Ben Stein in his documentary film "Expelled," compelled atheist spokesman Richard Hawkins to accede rather than admit to the possibility of a Creator; the big-bang theory, of which the Enlightened People are enamored, is just a messier way of telling the Genesis story - and in Genesis, we might add, the time and spatial elements are reconciled, and we at least are given an explanation for who lit the fuse; and perhaps most outrageous of all, that life after death is not only plausible but highly probable.

Proving the latter - that life after death is highly likely - is the task Mr. D'Souza sets for himself, and he carries it out with panache, collecting much of the best that has been thought and said on both sides of the argument and using the tools customarily reserved to the Enlightened People - neuroscience, physics, biology, psychology, philosophy and history.

As Mr. D'Souza puts it, his intent "is to demonstrate life after death exclusively on the basis of reason. I am not going to appeal to divine intervention or miracles, because I am making a secular argument in a secular culture .... The core of the book consists of three independent arguments for life after death: one from neuroscience, one from philosophy, and one from morality."

He explores the concept of the afterlife down through history and across nations and cultures, and in the process he examines various beliefs and phenomena, among them reincarnation and the near-death experiences recorded by Plato and the Venerable Bede and experienced and discussed by Ernest Hemingway, Carl Jung and A.J. Ayer, atheist and father of logical positivism - surely, viewed objectively, one of the world's most rational men.

Ayer, whose heart had stopped in an intensive care unit, found himself in a realm " 'where the laws of nature had ceased to function,' " Mr. D'Souza writes. After recovering, Ayer remained an atheist, Mr. D'Souza tells us, but admitted that experiences like his provide " 'rather strong evidence that death does not put an end to consciousness.' "

Ayer's conclusion comes as no great surprise, for many of us believe that the single strongest argument for the existence of an afterlife is the inability of the human mind to conceive of nonexistence. But for afterlife deniers, Ayer's case is one too many: "From their point of view, near death experiences ... should be impossible ... a single authentic case would be sufficient to refute the premise that 'nothing comes after death,' and to show that there is something more."

But beyond random sampling, Mr. D'Souza believes, history provides one case study that demonstrates conclusively the reality of the afterlife - the death and resurrection of Christ.

For the purposes of argument, he treats Christ's resurrection without "privileged treatment as a sacred event," but as "an historical claim no different from any other historical claim." He examines the claims thoroughly, both pro and con, and concludes, convincingly, that "based on scholarly standards uniformly applied, the resurrection survives historical scrutiny."

Mr. D'Souza's objective, he writes, has been through rational argumentation to "offer a highly persuasive legal brief for the afterlife. Still, it is in the nature of the subject that we cannot be sure. If we think of this as a courtroom trial, I do not claim to have met the criminal standard; I will not prove life after death beyond a reasonable doubt. I do, however, claim to have met the civil standard, and proven my case by a preponderance of the evidence."

He has indeed, and done so in crisp, precise and elegant prose, informed by a depth of scholarship and what one suspects is a hard-won but deep and abiding faith.

John R. Coyne Jr., a former White House speechwriter, is co-author with Linda Bridges of "Strictly Right: William F. Buckley and the American Conservative Movement" (Wiley, 2007).