The Case for the Afterlife with Chris Carter

Summary

Oxford-educated physics teacher Chris Carter joins psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove to argue that science, done properly, does not rule out life after death and may actually support it. Carter lays out five independent lines of evidence, namely deathbed visions, near-death experiences, apparitions, children who remember past lives, and communication through mediums, which he says all point to the survival of consciousness. Highlights include a chess match allegedly played between a living grandmaster and a dead one through a medium, and a dying woman who 'saw' a sister whose death had been kept from her.

Key takeaways

• 1Carter's book 'The Case for the Afterlife' rests survival on five lines of evidence: deathbed visions, NDEs, apparitions, children's past-life memories, and mediumship
• 2Polls of 1,000 scientists in 1916 and 1996 each found about 40% believed in a prayer-answering God and an afterlife
• 3Medium Robert Rollans allegedly relayed chess moves from deceased grandmaster Géza Maróczy against Viktor Korchnoi over nearly eight years; Carter rejects parapsychologist Ed May's fraud critique as 'conceivable doubt' rather than reasonable doubt
• 4The George Pellew case, investigated by Richard Hodgson through medium Leonora Piper in Boston, is cited, including Pellew's failure to recognize a grown-up Miss Warner as evidence against telepathy
• 5Sir William Barrett and Lady Barrett recorded a dying woman, Doris, who saw her sister Vida, whose death three weeks earlier had been hidden from her (a 'Peak in Darien' case)
• 6Ian Stevenson's past-life research beginning in India in the 1960s and the Scole Experiments, involving medium Robin Foy, are discussed as further evidence

Glossary terms

Source

Transcript excerpt

Albert Einstein, for instance, believed in the existence of a creator of vast intellect and extreme power who created the universe, but he did not believe, well, I should say that after the horrors of the Holocaust were revealed at the end of the Second World War, he stopped believing in a god who interfered in human existence, and he did not personally believe that he would survive the change called death. So, you know, there's no really such thing as mainstream scientific opinion, the opinions are all over the place, but as I said before, there's a growing consensus among the more enlightened or well-read or philosophically oriented scientists that science done properly, as I said, points towards the existence of a creator. Keep watching to learn more. You can now download all nine copies of the New Thinking Allowed magazine for free or order beautiful printed copies. Go to newthinkingallowed.org. New Thinking Allowed is presented by the California Institute for Human Science, a fully accredited university offering distant learning graduate degrees that focus on mind, body, and spirit. The topics that we cover here. We are particularly excited to announce new degrees emphasizing parapsychology and the paranormal. Visit their website at cihs.edu. Book four in the New Thinking Allowed dialogue series is Charles T. Tartt, Seventy Years of Exploring Consciousness and Parapsychology, now available on Amazon. Thinking Allowed. Conversations on the leading edge of knowledge and discovery with psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove. Hello and welcome. I'm Jeffrey Mishlove. Today we'll be talking about science and the afterlife. My guest is Chris Carter, a physics teacher who was educated at Oxford in England. He is the author of four books that make him one of the most significant authors today exploring the question of life after death. ...

Excerpt from New Thinking Allowed, Aug 28, 2026. Rights remain with the original creators. Hear the full episode at the source.