Can Science Prove Life After Death?

The short answer to the question can science prove life after death is—YES. The problem is not about designing objective and replicable clinical tests or even inventing machines sensitive enough to register organized consciousness outside of matter. All that would be easy in comparison to something like the Hadron Collider built to discover how matter forms at a subatomic level. The collider is a subterranean machine 17 miles (27 km) in length running under the Swiss-French border. Its development is a joint effort of European nations (CERN) and its data are sent to some 160 universities throughout the world for analysis. Nor is the problem about cost. The price tag for the Hadron Collider is already well into billions of euros. Compare this high-level, international government and university sponsored coordination and mind-boggling expense for the Hadron Collider to the small-scale, uncoordinated investigation of life after death, an enterprise which is nearly always conducted privately, and without outside funding. As science routinely invents devices that can “see” the invisible, whether in astrophysics or nuclear physics, why can’t it develop the technology it takes to prove life after death?

The problem is attitude. A Gallup poll on immortality found that only 16% of leading scientists believed in life after death as opposed to anywhere from 67% to 82% of the general population, according to several polls combined. And only 4% of these scientists thought it might be possible for science to prove it. Apparently they have no trouble believing in Multiverses in which a nearly infinite number of parallel universes are imperceptible or String Theory with its 11 dimensions of reality, some of them also imperceptible, and the Hidden Worlds Theory, which again hypothesizes imperceptible universes. But an afterlife? That’s just too crazy. Although this poll dates back to 1982 and so far newer ones have not been taken, the scorn and ridicule targeted at scientists who might be brave enough to propose testing for an afterlife and the subsequent loss or demotion of their professional positions are costs too high to risk. Even so, funding to test a survival hypothesis would hardly be granted.

So far evidence for survival is coming from the softer sciences, psychiatry, psychology as well as medicine and biology, with specific, potentially revolutionary hints in neurobiology, quantum biology and genetics. Even in the softer sciences, however, a person chances considerable derision if not loss of professional reputation for pursuing research in this area. Ironically, the hard sciences are doing the most to dismantle the assumption that the material universe is the only real universe—a crucial point for any argument for a non-material dimension of the dead. Astrophysics claims that 95.4% of the entire universe is not made up of the kind of matter and energy we call “real.” Less than a third of the 95.4% is composed instead of a mysterious substance called dark matter and more than 2/3rds of it is equally strange dark energy. The universe we are accustomed to thinking of as real amounts to a mere 4.6% and is composed of the kind of matter and energy we know. But quantum mechanics describes the matter that makes up our world, our bodies, and the computer in front of you as barely physical at all. In fact, the ratio of the amount of matter in an atom to the total size of an atom is roughly that of a pea to a football field. The rest is energy in the form of forces and oscillations. If you took all the space out of the atoms making up the human body, the amount of solid matter left would be the size of a microscopic dot. Theoretically then, what separates us from discarnates is that dot.

Most of us believe that the hard sciences, such as physics and chemistry, conduct the most objective and most accurate tests in comparison to the softer sciences. But any particle physicist knows that there is no such thing as objectivity. We also assume that the hard sciences’ test results are more precisely measured and more consistent than those of other sciences.  If you really look closely at how scientific proof is achieved, you may be astonished to find that solid proof is not so solid. Dean Radin, senior scientist for The Institute of Noetic Science, gives many examples in his book, The Conscious Universe. One study he looks at was conducted by Larry Hedge of the University of Chicago. Hedge’s analysis compared the empirical replication rate for particle physics—the hardest of the hard sciences—with the empirical success in replication for social sciences. Both particle physics and social sciences showed a statistical inconsistency of 45%, that is, when all studies were taken into account. For reasons of design flaws or flukes, particle physicists discarded tests whose results were incompatible with expected ones. Since we now know that soft-science experiments can be as successfully replicated as those in hard sciences, we can assume that there is a potential design for replicable clinical tests on the continuation of organized consciousness outside of matter. I also suspect that the electrical energy of the dead—an energy my own body registers so strongly—could be precisely measured, which would yield quantifiable results. The technology sensitive enough to do so already exists.

Much of what the hard sciences propose as real is more often extrapolation from a set of effects rather than fact. If this and that are observed to happen, why they happen is deduced. From these deductions, a workable hypothesis is formed and then tested. We don’t really know, for instance, if there was ever a Big Bang. There has been no direct observation of this proposed cosmic event. That’s why the Hadron Collider was built, to attempt reproduction of how matter was born. The assumptions of a Big Bang or even a black hole are derived from a set of discernible conditions that can best be explained—in the current state of our knowledge—by a bang or a hole.

The evidence for survival already available satisfies the scientific criteria required for testing. First, there is a phenomenon in which it can be definitely stated that something real has happened because of its effects. That phenomenon could be anything from a recorded voice with no known source, a picture of a deceased individual picked up on film or a visitation from the deceased witnessed by more than one person simultaneously. Second, a very finite number of hypothetical causes from these effects can be extrapolated. And third, the hypothesis that best and most elegantly explains all the observable effects of a given phenomenon is the existence of organized consciousness outside the realm of matter.  The problem of replicating these effects under clinical conditions remains however. If the dead could be induced to participate, and they can be, we could test for other more quantifiable effects, especially in the electromagnetic range. Another obvious route would be the development of sensitive communication technology. The private sector that researches Instrumental Transcommunication, as it is called, has already made remarkable progress, sometimes with startling success. If only 1% of the money and expertise that went into the Hadron Collider were available (even better, 1% of the ten trillion spent on developing the atomic bomb), within a matter of a few years science could prove life after death.