While some believe that when we die, that’s it for us, others are convinced that there’s an afterlife waiting for us following our time on Earth.
As of 2021, nearly three-quarters of US adults said that they believed in heaven, as per the Pew Research Center. This belief was largely held by Christian respondents, but it was found that 26 percent of agnostics also believed in heaven.
While not everyone said they thought heaven existed, a proportion of those who said they did not believe in heaven or hell did admit that they consider the idea that there’s some kind of afterlife.
One person who thinks there’s an afterlife is Dr Hugh Ross, a Canadian astrophysicist and Christian author.
With his expertise in mind, Dr Ross has shared five ‘lines of evidence for the existence of a transcendent realm beyond’.
The universe’s limits
As I’m sure you’re aware, the universe is pretty darn huge – but just how huge is unknown.
With this in mind, Dr Ross suggests that since we can’t observe all of the universe, there could well be something beyond what we can currently see.
“Given that mass exists in the universe and that general relativity reliably describes the movements of massive bodies in the universe, these theorems establish the necessity of a causal agent (aka Creator/God) beyond space and time,’ Dr Ross told MailOnline.
“[The Creator is] responsible for creating space and time and all the matter and energy that comprises the cosmos.”
The Bible
Many might question how reliable the Bible is, but Dr Ross insists that it has ‘proven reliability’.
“While the Bible certainly is (and often has been) subject to misinterpretation, reasonably defensible interpretations do show that what the Bible records about history, science, and geography proves correct,” he said.
Dr Ross went on to claim that scientific phenomena is alluded to in the Bible that’s later discovered by people in the future, i.e the Big Bang. In the Bible, it speaks of a transcendent cosmic beginning and a universe undergoing a general, continual expansion (the two fundamentals of the Big Bang).
More specifically, in Isaiah 42:5 it says of this: “This is what the Lord says – He who created the heavens and stretched them out.”
UFOs
People’s recorded experiences of seeing apparent UFOs in the sky could be another signal to the afterlife.
Of these unidentified objects that have been spotted over the years, some have been ‘impervious to the laws of physics’, says Dr Ross.
How this evidence to an afterlife, the scientist said: “The existence of non-physical reality stands as evidence for the existence of a realm beyond the dimensions of the universe.”
Near-death experiences
Many people who have been close to dying have spoken out after what they experienced as they nearer the end of the life, Jose Hernandez included.
Hernandez said he was a ‘true atheist’, but in what he described as heaven during his near-death experience, he was reunited with his late father.
“When I met my dad on the other side, I realised that sometimes we may not be able to say something here, [but] we’re gonna be able to say it somewhere else,” he said afterwards.
Hernandez also claimed to have watched doctors try and save his life from outside his body.
It’s near-death experiences (NDEs) like these that Dr Ross says are consistent with the Christian belief that the soul leaves the body during death.
“Some NDE claims may be explained by oxygen deprivation in the brain,’ Dr Ross told Mail Online.
“However, many others remain firmly established, as cardiologist Michael Sabom – a former NDE skeptic – has documented in his books.”
Effectiveness of prayer
Dr Ross argued that praying in enough to prove that there’s a ‘transcendent realm’.
Explaining why, he said: “People who are prayed for by believers in the Christian God experience measurably more rapid and complete recovery from surgeries or medically confirmed ailments than do people for whom no such prayer is offered.”
This would imply that there is a God, thus an afterlife.
