Eben AlexanderMichael ShermerNeurosurgeon Eben Alexander debated skeptic Michael Shermer on the Larry King Now show about "Does heaven exist?", along with spiritual activist Marianne Williamson and Rabbi Marvin Hier. Larry King had earlier interviewed Dr. Alexander and later the debate among the four thinkers was recorded.

Shermer's argument was that all experience derives from the brain as we can see from cases of senility and dementia. Alexander's near-death experience can be explained completely by neurological phenomena occurring very quickly as he came out of coma, producing a very powerful dream-like hallucination which Alexander later elaborated with confabulations. Alexander countered that his experience was way too real and rich to be an hallucination and that it is a mistake to assume that all experience occurs through the brain.

Take the example of terminal lucidity, where a person with severe dementia suddenly regains motor ability and clarity of thought and memory just before dying. These cases show conscious functioning with a severely dysfunctional brain.

Alexander stated that he does not doubt his experience; he knows he was not hallucinating. In his book he explores how science cannot explain at all how consciousness emerges from the brain. Shermer stated that science needs positive evidence instead of a claim that consciousness is not dependent on the brain.

The debate was much more far-reaching than this simple summary. It ended with "Let's all hope that Michael's wrong [about the afterlife] — including Michael!"

Dr. Alexander did not have the time to respond to all the points that Shermer raised, but he has in other talks pointed to specific "time anchors" that establish that his experiences in coma were contemporaneous with events that occurred while he was still in deep coma, several days before he regained consciousness. Alexander was able to identify several people whose faces appeared to him in his experience who were praying for him at the same time, including one person who was located 125 miles from the hospital.