What we can learn from people who die and have so-called Near Death Experiences is that they report experiencing God or the light of God beyond death. After leaving their bodies, people explain entering another worldly dimension that is beyond human comprehension and for lack of words to describe this other dimension people resort to using the word God. There is simply no other experience or reference point here in this world that compares to what is experienced in the near death experience (NDE), and therefore, people are forced to use the realm of God to explain what they have experienced.

Author and NDE researcher Rene Jorgensen has recently released a three year long study of near death experiences and their parallels to religion. In his study of 16 people who have had a near death experience, he asked: “What would you describe the core or essence of your experience as?”

Here the study found that 53 percent checked the box with “pure being,” and 60 percent said yes to “essence of existence.” Moving further into trying to put a name on this core or essence, the consensus became even higher with 73 percent agreeing to call it “the Light.” The highest consensus was found through the religious word “God,” where 80 percent agreed to call the core of their experience – the experience of “God.”

One person in the study explains:

“What I knew when I came back was that I know that light was of God. It was of or from God. I didn`t think the light itself was necessarily God, although it could be, I don`t know. But I know that that light is part of God...or a part of what God emits.”

There are many theories that try to explain away the near death experience, such as REM activity or hallucinations caused by the lack of oxygen to the brain. However, the fact remains that no theory to date is able to explain all the elements of the NDE. Most of these skeptical theories involve a brain that is active while near death experiences happen during flat EEG (no brain function), and therefore, classical science is challenged as clear vivid experience should not be possible.

When we add the scientific evidence to support that these experiences are indeed real to what Rene Jorgensen found in his study we have evidence for God. If we define God as 'ultimate reality' or ontological as that which is greater than what we can conceive, then Jorgensen's study found a strong case. Along with 80 percent saying that they had an experience of 'God,' the study also found that the same amount said that they were either not certain if or they could not "interpret precisely in human language" what they had experienced beyond death.