Oxford Professor of Medicine, and theologian, Michael Marsh finds much he doesn’t like about near-death experience claims of spirit communication. Many within the mainstream medical community have reservations about near death expereincers who claim to experience an afterlife, but many are surprised to hear the same doubts from Christian theologians. Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with Professor Michael Marsh, a former Professor of Medicine, at Oxford who returned to Oxford to complete PhD in Theology. Dr. Marsh, who recently authored, Out-Of-Body Experience and Near-Death Experiences: Brain-State Phenomena or Glimpses of Immortality?, rejects claims made by near-death experiencers. When asked if those who claim to encounter Jesus during their near-death experience are communicating with Christ Dr. Marsh responded with and emphatic, “no!” Marsh also offers his opinion on how near death experiences compare to biblical accounts of an afterlife, "I don't think there's much that compares with our ideas of resurrection or theology. We talked a little bit about spirituality, and I don't think that the sort of disclosures that we have… the inconsistencies of the pictures of so-called heaven, and the pictures of so-called Jesus and all the rest of it are consistent. You might expect them to be consistent if people really had been to heaven and seen Jesus or been in the presence of God.” Read Dr. Marsh's book Play it: Download MP3 (37:00 min.) Read it: Alex Tsakiris: We're joined today by Professor Michael Marsh, a highly regarded academic biomedical researcher and physician who was formerly a Professor of Medicine at Oxford, and then later in his career returned to Oxford to complete a PhD in theology. Now, his doctoral thesis was on near-death experience and out-of-body experience, and that's also the subject of his recently published book titled, Out-Of-Body Experience and Near-Death Experiences: Brain-State Phenomena or Glimpses of Immortality? Dr. Marsh, thank you for joining me today on Skeptiko.
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