Let's Roll

Among the many heroes who died on 9/11/2001, especially the first responders who rushed into the World Trade Towers to save lives and lost theirs when the buildings collapsed, some who stand out were not on the ground but in the air on Flight 93.

Mene Ukueberuwa has a short piece in the Wall Street Journal (paywall) describing the actions of one of the many American heroes on 9/11 twenty two years ago.

For those readers too young to remember, this particular man's name was Todd Beamer, a young man who embodied in his courage, toughness and faith all that is great in America today.

Beamer was aboard United Airlines Flight 93 enroute to California when it was hijacked by four al-Qaeda terrorists. It crashed into a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, about 65 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, following an attempt by the passengers and crew to regain control of the plane. All 44 people on board were killed, including the four hijackers.

The hijackers stormed the aircraft's cockpit 46 minutes after takeoff, and the captain and first officer fought with them. One of the terrorists, Ziad Jarrah, had trained as a pilot, and took control of the aircraft, diverting it toward the east coast, in the direction of Washington, D.C. The hijackers apparently intended to crash the plane into the Capitol Building or the White House.

Several passengers and flight attendants learned from phone calls that suicide attacks had already been made by hijacked airliners on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Many of the passengers then attempted to retake the plane, and during the struggle the hijackers deliberately crashed the plane.

Ukueberuwa writes:

A 32-year-old software salesman for Oracle, Beamer was among the passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 who attacked the hijackers and prevented them from crashing the Boeing 757 into the U.S. Capitol. His rallying cry, “Let’s roll,” rests in America’s memory. It is exalting to think of what he and his fellow passengers did on that short flight, and the people they saved on the ground.

Beamer remained poised under extreme pressure. Many passengers made phone calls during the flight, but Beamer’s call with Airfone operator Lisa Jefferson became the fullest account of what took place in the air that day. He remained on the line for 14 minutes, describing the direction of the plane, the hijackers’ behavior and, eventually, the passengers’ decision to revolt.

“His voice was devoid of any stress,” Ms. Jefferson later said. “In fact, he sounded so tranquil it made me begin to doubt the authenticity and urgency of his call.”

Beamer was also physically confident, and courageous. As a student at Wheaton College in Illinois, he played baseball and captained the basketball team. In a memoir, Beamer’s wife Lisa relates that he once played a soccer game with a broken jaw.

Todd Beamer's wife and children with photo of Todd two weeks after 9/11

It’s fortunate that Beamer and the three other passengers who spearheaded the revolt — Jeremy Glick, Mark Bingham and Tom Burnett — were athletes. The hijackers pitched the plane back and forth sharply in a failed attempt to shake their attackers off their feet.

The cockpit recording, filled with slams, shattering plates, and howls, reveals that the terrorists took the plane down only after six minutes of the passengers’ sustained assault.

A strong Christian faith also carried Beamer toward his fate. Lisa recounts that their life together was founded on faith — at Wheaton, while rearing children, and teaching Sunday school at Princeton Alliance Church.

Before ending his call with Ms. Jefferson, Beamer asked, “Would you do one last thing for me?”

“Yes. What is it?” she answered.

“Would you pray with me?”

They said the Lord’s Prayer together in full, and other passengers joined in. Beamer then recited Psalm 23, concluding, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.” Immediately after, he turned to his co-conspirators and asked, “Are you guys ready? OK, let’s roll.”

They passengers apparently managed to kill one of the hijackers, but when they breached the cabin, or were about to, the hijackers decided to plunge the plane to earth.

You can read a full description of what happened on Flight 93 here.

A country that produces men like Beamer and those who fought alongside him is, despite the violence perpetrated by deranged individuals, still a great country.

Maybe the Best Empirical Evidence for Life After Death (Pt.II)

Yesterday's VP post discussed a few examples of what are called evidential NDEs, Near Death Experiences for which there is independent corroboration. The post was based on excerpts from Gary Habermas's chapter on NDEs in the book Minding the Brain.

Today's post summarizes a second excerpt from that chapter. The entire excerpt can be found here, and in it Habermas discusses cases where the NDEr is the only person who knows that someone else has died. Habermas notes that,

Another body of evidence comes from cases where particular persons, often friends or loved ones but sometimes others, had died recently, but the death was unknown to the NDEr until the deceased persons appeared in the NDE or deathbed vision.

[There are] three distinct species of these experiences: (1) where the death of the deceased individual occurred well before the NDE, but the death was not known by the NDEr before the occurrence of the NDE; (2) where the deceased person had died at the same time as the NDE experience, or “immediately beforehand,” thus precluding previous knowledge of the death on the part of the NDEr (or others in the room); (3) where the deceased was a person whom the NDEr did not even know.

In all three species of these NDEs (especially the last), information was purportedly imparted from the previously deceased individuals to the person who had the near-death experience, with subsequent confirmation of the reports. Over two dozen such examples were collected by Greyson, and other researchers have also presented similar accounts.

These examples are both tragic and fascinating. Here's one:

A young nine-year-old boy named Eddie was seriously ill in a hospital. Recovering from a thirty-six-hour fever, Eddie immediately told those in the hospital room that he had been to heaven, recounting seeing his grandfather, an aunt, and an uncle there.

But then his startled and agitated father heard Eddie report that his nineteen-year-old sister Tammy, away at college, was in heaven too, and she told Eddie that he had to return. But the father had just spoken to Tammy two days prior.

Checking with the college, the father found out that his daughter had been killed in a car accident the previous day, but that the college could not reach the family at their home, presumably because of Eddie’s hospital stay!

Another example of this type are simultaneous or shared near-death experiences reported by at least two different people and supported by accounts from physicians, nurses, or others. In most such cases, a healthy person shares part or all of the NDE experience of the ill person.

In one case, a seventeen-year-old boy named Shane died in a traffic accident. His fifteen-year-old deaf sister Cheryl “observed” the entire accident process, though she was a distance away at home when the event occurred. She observed Shane “flying through the air” and knew that he was dead.

Cheryl sensed that her brother was contacting her without words, relating that he wanted to show her “something really cool.” She then reported that the two of them “rose in the air, high above the scene of the accident.” She accompanied her deceased brother to heaven, where they met previously dead relatives.

Her brother did not return, since he was deceased. But during the process, her parents could hear her talking to her brother while the other three family members were all at home, where Cheryl was present and conscious.

Upon her “return,” she brought back information that no one else knew, but which was verified subsequently. Shane had said to Cheryl repeatedly, “I know something that you don’t know.” Then he told his sister that their aunt was pregnant with a boy, though no one in the family knew that at the time.

Cheryl reported observing the event while her two parents witnessed her side of the conversation.

Another type of empirically verifiable NDEs is found in cases of people blind since birth reporting having seen things during their NDE. These cases are significant, as it would be difficult for many of the specific items to have been known previously by the patients, through any of their physical senses.

One episode concerned a woman named Vicki who had been blind from birth. During her NDE, Vicki reported color images, including a rendezvous with two close friends from her youth. Both of them had also been blind, and both had died previously. She reported that two other deceased friends and a deceased relative were also present. She provided accurate physical descriptions of each one, even though she had never seen any of them before. She also provided details, such as a glimpse of the roof of the hospital and a description of some jewelry.

Another NDE case involved a woman named Nancy, who became blind during an operation and remained completely blind afterwards.

She had an Ambu bag placed over her nose and mouth to make her breathe. In her NDE she reported watching the process away from her body. Afterwards, she properly described the identities of two men standing down the hallway away from her, and gave the correct number of staff people around her. Her medical records, plus a testimony from one of the men, were “in substantial agreement” with Nancy’s comments and agreed “in virtually every significant respect.”

Brad had been blind since birth. He had stopped breathing for a few minutes and then noticed himself looking down on his body in the bed. He described details of another person in the room with him who went to get help, then experienced himself going up through the ceiling and out of the building, where he observed the rooftop.

He related that he could see clearly and described the scene outside of his home by providing many details, including very specific information regarding the snow on the ground and how it had been plowed into heaps. A streetcar also drove by.

In another case, Frank was a blind man who described the pattern of colors and designs on a necktie that he had received. Some of these details were confirmed in additional interviews.

[Researchers] Ring and Cooper conducted extensive discussions with these blind individuals, and attempted to confirm their stories with others who were present. They concluded that “the blind persons in our study saw what they certainly could not possibly have seen physically. Our findings in this section only establish a putative case that these visions were factually accurate, and not just some kind of fabrication, reconstruction, lucky guess, or fantasy.”

It's possible, of course, that some of these accounts have a materialist or naturalist explanation, but there are so many of them that one has to be impressed by the sheer number, variety, and in many cases, the quality of medical documentation.

Moreover, if only a single one of the thousands of cases in the literature is veridical, then materialism must be false, since materialism insists that human beings are solely material and that everything about us is reducible to atoms and chemistry. If a single example of an NDE is actually what it purports to be, however, then there must be something about us - a consciousness, a soul - that's immaterial and which persists beyond the physical death of the body.

I'll post the third and final part of this series tomorrow.