Out of Body Experience
The scientific, rational, evidentiary, and experiential proof

OUR PHYSICAL REALITY dissolves to a nonphysical nothingness in which all the rules that we commonly associate with reality no longer apply. Somehow, out of this counterintuitive realm of timelessness, infinity, unpredictability – such as having an out of body experience - and countless dimensions our sane, predictable, a four dimensional physical world appears. Those are the facts we must grapple with to answer the big questions.

So what could be the "nothing" that is sufficient to explain the infinite something of our universe? What could explain not only physicality, but us intelligent humans who are asking these questions? Physical things in themselves do not create intelligence, nor can they logically account for their own existence. Materialism, as will continue to be explained in this book, does not and cannot yield the answers no matter what nook and cranny of it is probed and prodded.

Many in modern society, even in what are heralded as being its most intelligent corners, embrace a suppositious faith in a materialistic religion. In that cathedral, the central doctrine is that physical laws, time, and chance are solely responsible for creating themselves and the intelligent order of the universe. Not only is there lack of proof in support of such a belief, as we will see, there is compelling and obvious evidence that negates it

For example, although we are surrounded by complexity and order, nowhere do we see it just appearing out of nowhere. That's because the Second Law of Thermodynamics precludes it. As we have discussed, this hallowed scientific law demands that spontaneity creates disorder, not order. Don't clean or straighten the house for a while and watch the law at work. Try to build a building by just setting the cement blocks, nails, and 2 x 4s on the ground. Then see if the wind or an earthquake will put it all together. The Second Law is the reason why perpetual motion machines cannot be built - things cannot continue indefinitely as usual, they must degrade and run down. Things left to just time and chance become disorded and break, they don't wind up nor assemble themselves into ordered or intelligent things.

The information inherent in all ordered systems creates an insurmountable problem for the materialistic faith. Books contain information, computers contain information, tricycles, pyramids, homes, bridges, and spoons contain information. Such artifacts are a manifestation of blueprints, engineering, and design - all forms of information. Natural things are also imbued with information. A grain of sand on the beach is differentiated from an aardvark by information.

Some attempt to get around the problem of how order and information could form spontaneously by arguing that probability always allows for the possibility of anything happening. For example, it is possible to get 10 heads in a row flipping a coin. As unlikely as that is, it is still possible. We must concede that flukes can happen. But materialists speciously go way beyond what is reasonable and conclude that probability and time can create any order, and do so again, and again, and again. What is not considered in this reasoning is that 10 heads in a row is an aberration, a miniscule event in the ultimate tendency toward randomness.

Let's recollect from a previous chapter how effete probability is; put coin flipping on the probabilistic scale necessary to account for the spontaneous appearance of the universe and life. Flip the coin trillions of times and get all heads. Change coins trillions of times and get all heads trillions of times in a row again and again. Then we are starting to talk the scale of improbabilities to have even one cell spontaneously generate, never mind the rest of the universe.

The materialist's response is that the odds must not be that bad since we and the universe exist. They feel there is some natural law that loads the dice and presses nature into its service to create our world's complexity. But no such law has ever been found. Nor can it be since it would be a direct contradiction to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Nevertheless, faith prevails and the materialist will insist that the fact that the universe exists is proof it got here on its own. That isn't proof; it is the irrationality of circular reasoning (assuming that which needs to be proven is true and proceeding from there) and non-falsifiability (assuming something to be true regardless of the evidence).

In spite of these difficulties, materialism is retained because no alternative can be imagined other than to cede to something believed to be far more irrational - institutional religion. Also, since materialism affords limitless freedom, in contrast to being bound by religious creeds, it has an edge no matter how irrational it may prove to be shown.

What is missed in this debate is that there are not just two choices. To repeat, rejecting materialism does not mean religion must be adopted; rejecting religion does not mean materialism must be adopted.

There is a third choice without the usual negative associations of either materialism or religion.

To understand what that is, let's revisit the eclectic catalog of strange, abstract, fantastic, surreal and unreal evidence discussed in the previous two chapters. Quantum and holistic reality is not sci-fi entertainment, it is crucial in opening our minds and breaking the bonds of materialism. If we are to learn one thing from looking back at the advance of knowledge, it's that the unusual idea, the atypical case, such as an out of body experience - if given an open-minded chance - is the one that provides the hope for teaching us about all the rest.

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