April 11, 2012 THE VILLADOM TIMES IV • Page 23 type AB bloodstains in the same locations. Everyone must decide for himself or herself what the resurrection means, but the fact that all four gospel writers mentioned a linen shroud is absolutely established. The respondents on the Internet also knew this. They quoted other passages in which Jesus, independent of the forensic testimony of the shroud, appeared to them and to other people who could, when they themselves were writing, have been called on to witness what they had seen. Is there any reason the testimony of witnesses should be more plausible than that of an author who says that there is no mention of the shroud in scripture? The left hook was also on the sloppy side of subjectivity. The author claimed that eight million people reported having near death experiences in which they saw themselves outside their physical bodies during a medical crisis. I believe this number was achieved by projecting the number of NDE cases reported to physicians against the general population of cardiac patients and represents an attempt to see how widespread the phenomenon could be. As of 2010, the number of medically supervised and reported cases was said to be about 135,000. The author who said that the light NDE survivors report was a simply physiochemical process related to the shut-down of the brain circuitry ignored the second and third stages of the NDE. The second stage is that NDE people when clinically dead, but still relatively young and healthy, report the activities and conversations of the physicians and nurses who are trying to revive them. Patients often report sarcastic remarks or techniques not generally shown to the public. One kid “came back” and teased the physician because the defibrillator had not been plugged in until a nurse noticed the error. One woman reported a shoe on a ledge outside her window – invisible from the bed – that she had seen while she was “outside.” She was right. Another reported a single shoe on the roof of the hospital. She was also right. The NDE is not a reduction of consciousness, but an expansion of consciousness. The third phase is when people who are really on the way out are revived temporarily, in most cases, and report seeing deceased relatives. This sounds like a vision subconsciously created to comfort the dying with hopes of a reunion. But wait. When my mother was dying, my wife, who sat up with her, kept a sort of census of which “spooks,” as my mother called them, showed up. Every one of them was someone who was actually deceased. Not one living person showed up on the invisible guest list. Many of the people who showed up would have been people she barely remembered. I knew two people personally who reported NDEs, one of them spontaneous and one of them induced. The induced guy was a Catholic engineer with two degrees in engineering, and the spontaneous returnee was a Russified Tartar who had a degree in biology and a degree in biochemistry. She said that seeing herself from the outside ruined her for atheism and for life in the Soviet Union. These were not scared kids or timid elderly people afraid of a good night’s sleep with no alarm clock. I have personally spoken to a U.S.-trained cardiologist and former White House physician who told me his colleagues knew all about this stuff and had seen cases that could not be explained by a brain shut-down. Forces are at work, obviously, to discredit both the resurrection of Jesus and the medical evidence for life after death. Those forces are now in disarray. People who responded to the second website also pointed out the information that “dead” people had brought back. Some told their own stories. Few, if any, were much impressed by a “scientific” viewpoint that ignored what really makes for good science: evidence. Experiments have been done. One study in Germany found that patients could be forced into an NDE by placing an electronic probe on part of the brain. One subject returned to consciousness and reported meeting some deceased relatives who asked indignantly: “What are you doing here? We weren’t expecting you for another 40 or 50 years!” The experiments were, I believe, terminated, and the doctors went back to recording spontaneous cases. The reason this stuff will not go away is because it really exists. The “fairy tale” is not that the resurrection happened. Based on Flavius Josephus, the Romans also knew about it, and it scared them. The “fairy tale” is that somebody made up the resurrection up. This “fairy tale” may bring comfort to those who dislike Christianity for personal reasons, but it does not sustain conviction. The idea that that soul dies with the body may bring comfort to people who would rather not face the consequences of their actions, but it can be explained as a favored superstition of dead and dying civilizations, not as “science.” The devout forms of Judaism, Islam, and most Buddhist and Hindu groups all accept a conscious afterlife, and so do many others who have no scripture to rely on. Whatever people may think of the modern individuals who sometimes bring discredit on their respective creeds by negative behavior, the core belief of all religions and the central event of Christianity in particular are evidentially established. People who think that this is bad news might want to reconsider their options. As devout Christians and Jews prepared to celebrate Easter and Passover, the people who select stories for the Internet attempted a pre-emotive strike against people of faith. The right cross, as it were, came with Internet publicity for a book that purports to show that the shroud of Turin was used to convince the early Christians that the resurrection actually took place. Since the author describes himself as an agnostic, he probably thinks that the resurrection did not happen. The left hook, aimed not just as Christians, but at all religious believers, is a sort of an “ain’t I smart” column that argued that the near death experience, seen by believers in many religions as evidence of an afterlife, is just a chemical response to the shut-down of the brain. The good news is that both writers made themselves ridiculous. The better news is that the response to the articles made it obvious that most people were not fooled, and that the critics of the Internet based their negative opinions not on blind faith but on clear logic and, in some cases, responsible reporting of personal experiences. The author who disparaged the idea that the shroud of Turin is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ started his terminal slide into implausibility by stating that the shroud is not mentioned in biblical accounts of the resurrection. Here is the real story from the New Oxford Annotated Bible, Revised Standard Version. Matthew 27, Verse 57, Joseph of Arimathea, a Jewish elder who is described as a disciple of Jesus, “took the body and wrapped in a clean linen shroud, and laid it in his own new tomb.” Mark 15, Verse 46, Joseph of Arimathea recovers the body of Jesus from the cross. “He bought a linen shroud, and laid Him in a tomb that had been hewn out of a rock…” Luke 23, Verses 52-53, also describe Joseph of Arimathea, an admirer of Jesus, assisting with his burial: “This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down and wrapped it in a linen shroud, and laid it in a rock-hewn tomb, where no one had ever been laid.” John 20, Verses 4-8, describe Peter and John running to the tomb after Mary Magdalene had seen Jesus: “They both ran, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first; and stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him and went into the tomb; he saw the linen cloths lying, and the napkin, which had been on his head, not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed…” Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – the authors, whose accounts have been authenticated to the 60s of the First Century – describe linen cloth or cloths and a separate head covering. The shroud of Turin is made of linen, the cloth has been carbon-tested and dates from the First Century, and the cloth contains pollen from plants that grow in Israel or Anatolia and bloom in April. The stains on the linen are actual blood, type AB, which is common among Jews and very rare among Europeans. The other cloth is known as the Sudarion of Orviedo, still exists in Spain, and has Blasphemy by Internet? Athletes to fight breast cancer In what has become a fast tradition in Upper Saddle River, the Women’s Biathlon will be held on Mother’s Day weekend (Saturday, May 19) this year. The event, which will begin and end at Lion’s Memorial Park, includes a two-mile run followed by a 10-mile bike race and another two-mile run. The event is a fundraiser for The Breast Cancer Research Foundation and has netted $75,000 in the last two years. The Women’s Biathlon was founded by Upper Saddle River residents Fiona Miesner and Carol Mateo, both of whom are active participants in community and athletic events. The event tends to attract a host of supporters and volunteers, and features music and a host of great prizes. The sprint distance was designed to attract participants at all levels, from beginners to serious competitors. The event is sponsored by the Upper Saddle River Recreation Commission and is open to participants who are ages 15 years and up. The field is limited to 250 athletes. Each athlete is asked to raise $150 in sponsorship fees, all of which will be donated to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. The entry fee is $50. A series of training clinics will be held prior to race day. Visit www.usrbiathlon. org for details. Trainers will be available to answer questions and offer training advice. In 2011, 10 seconds separated the top three finishers. Danielle Badenhausen of Ramsey finished first with a time of 1 hour 43 seconds. Marcy Squadron of Upper Saddle River finished second with a time of 1 hour 51 seconds, and Robyn Ransom of Woodcliff Lake took third place with a time of 1 hour 53 seconds. For more information and to register, log on to usrbiathlon.org and click on the active.com link. For questions and to volunteer, e-mail Carol Mateo at cmateo@verizon.net.