Cornelius Davis [00:00:00]:

The deeper you get into science and the more you understand it, the more it confirms Christianity. And you see any number of high level scientists who come to Christianity due to their science, not due to anything else. They see the level of design that exists in their field, and they there's no other explanation. There's a designer.

Jim Spiegel [00:00:28]:

Welcome to the Kalos Center podcast. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Kalos Center podcast. Our guest today is Cornelius Davis. Doctor Davis the third is a cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon in Houston, Texas. He holds undergraduate degrees in chemistry and political science from the University of North Carolina. He went from there to study, at Duke University for medical school. He did residencies at Duke University, Northwestern University, Boston University, Albert Einstein University, and University of Texas.

Jim Spiegel [00:01:15]:

Doctor Davis went on to start his own practice in Houston, serving in various roles at his five hospitals, including chairman of surgery and medical director of cardiovascular services. After taking his practice to Iowa to lead cardiovascular services in a three hospital system, he has since returned to reestablish his practice in Houston. Doctor Davis has published in many top tier peer reviewed journals in his field and is a veteran of the conference lecture circuit, primarily speaking on the topics of minimally invasive techniques, endovascular therapies, and vascular testing technologies. His wife and four children occupy most of his nonworking time, but he occasionally escapes to hunt, play music, and fly airplanes as a private pilot. So Cornelius Davis, welcome to the Kalos Center podcast.

Cornelius Davis [00:02:10]:

Thank you.

Jim Spiegel [00:02:11]:

I'm so glad you're able to join us, and that you weren't called away, to, I don't know, save yet another human life.

Cornelius Davis [00:02:19]:

Not today. Well, so far.

Jim Spiegel [00:02:21]:

No. So I'm curious, how much are you on call, and how often do you get emergency calls in the middle of the night?

Cornelius Davis [00:02:29]:

So, it depends on the acuity of the hospitals that you're covering. And so if you're at a bigger hospital in the medical center, which I was for, the early years of my practice, you get called in the middle of the night fairly frequently on your call nights. But as you get more senior, they don't expect you to do as much call. And now that I'm into the twentieth decade of my practice, fortunately, they tend to call the younger bucks, and so I don't have the same level of, calls in the middle of the night. So that's good.

Jim Spiegel [00:03:08]:

Okay. Well, the benefits of seniority, I suppose.

Cornelius Davis [00:03:12]:

Yes. Indeed.

Jim Spiegel [00:03:13]:

So what prompted you to go into the medical field and to be a surgeon, and in particular, a cardiothoracic surgeon?

Cornelius Davis [00:03:21]:

So my introduction to the medical arena came through my mother's breast cancer, which occurred when I was six. And so over the next four years, she spent a fair amount of time in and out of hospitals getting therapies and that sort of thing. And so when she died when I was 10, I had spent a pretty large amount of time sitting in hospital lobbies because back in those days, they wouldn't allow kids up into the rooms, and, that introduced me to this mystical place of weird costumes where everybody wore white, and it smelled like alcohol. And, it was just a odd, mystical place where you'd see people walking out with newborn babies and families walking out crying after someone had died. So there was life and death going on all in this place. There wasn't really any other setting where that sort of thing occurred, so it was unique in, all of that. So I think that was the, probably what got me into medicine, the interest in medicine itself. Surgery in particular came through a scouting leader who was a podiatrist.

Cornelius Davis [00:04:33]:

And on one of those go work with the professional days at school, I went to work with my scout leader, and these people walked into the clinic. He prepped their foot, and then he operated on them in the clinic, opening up their body. And it was completely, I I just couldn't get wrap my brain around the fact that you could open up someone's body in a clinic, fix things, close it back up. They would thank you and walk out. That just kinda blew my mind that you could get away with that, and that was considered acceptable. So, that's what got me interested in surgery.

Jim Spiegel [00:05:19]:

Now at some point, since this takes such fine dexterity and a certain calm, steady, poised disposition. Right. I suppose you discovered that along the way, that you had that as part of your gift set?

Cornelius Davis [00:05:34]:

We don't really know that until you get into medical school and, you're doing your surgery rotation, that's where you actually start doing surgical procedures. And I found or probably in anatomy. That was the other thing. I was the in my group of when we were doing anatomy in our first year of medical school, of the four of us, they pretty quickly realized, let's have Cornelius do the dissection because if he does it, he doesn't, abrogate the planes of and you can actually see the parts clearly. Whereas if some of my colleagues were doing it, they would sort of mess the field up, and then it was more difficult to identify the structures that we were studying. So I became the primary dissector of our group, and that was that's sort of like an indicator of, maybe I have some skills here, but you don't know to what degree. And then later, when we're doing the surgery rotation, you're actually doing actual surgery, and you find out whether you have the abilities to pull that off. Mhmm.

Cornelius Davis [00:06:44]:

That and the fact, I'm natively ambidextrous, so using both of my hands is routine for me.

Jim Spiegel [00:06:51]:

Oh, yeah. It's good. Yeah. I I take a certain pride in, my fine motor skills, but I'm content applying it to, carpentry, woodworking. Yeah. Thank you very much. I'm I'm gonna steer clear of the, the living tissues. Right.

Jim Spiegel [00:07:10]:

Right. I'll leave it to experts, trained experts like you. So when and how did you convert to Christianity, and how does your faith impact your work?

Cornelius Davis [00:07:20]:

So, I would say the it began through what, you know, you see in, Hebrews four twelve. It's that active word that that did the initial work for me. So I was raised Catholic, and, I have one of those minds that has to be occupied or I'm trouble. And so I got into a fair amount of issues with in school because I was just bored. So when I would be forced to sit through these masses, they would read these passages, and I would play mental games with the passages. So, like, Ephesians two eight, it says, for grace are you saved through faith, that not of yourselves. It is a gift of God. And I would sit there and I'd go, okay.

Cornelius Davis [00:08:09]:

I know a girl named Grace, and I know a girl named Faith. And Grace is a really nice person, so I could see how she might save me, but Faith is not the nicest person around. So how she's in the process, I'm not sure. I I really get that that flies. And or maybe her name they named her incorrectly because she can't be part of it. And I would play those little mental games as things were going on, but what I did not know was by playing those games, those verses were integrating themselves into my mentality. So or another example would be like Ephesians one seven where, you know, it talks about we have redemption through His blood, and so And blood fascinated me because I was like, oh, blood, you know? And how could blood redeem me? And so my mind would be in a rabbit trail thinking about redemption and blood and, you know, the whole commemoration of that on a weekly basis. And so what I did not know was the catechism of the Catholic church despite going to Catholic schools.

Cornelius Davis [00:09:21]:

No clue. They didn't really teach it in a dogmatic way, despite having Christian education all the way through. So flash forward to when I'm 12, we're sitting on a beach with my sister, and, campus crusade kids come up and they said, hey, how you doing? You know, if you were to die tonight, do you know where you would go? And my sister goes, look, we're Catholic. Get lost. And she's a she's a lawyer. So that's, you know, kind of lawyer mentality or future lawyer. And I said I turned over and I said, yeah. Heaven.

Cornelius Davis [00:09:55]:

And, they heard, you know, they heard that and they were like, We're gonna talk to him. And so they said, so, why exactly do you think that you'd go to heaven? And I said, well, because Jesus died for my sins and I've accepted him. So, I, the scripture says, you're saved if you, you know, if you believe, put your faith in him And they looked at and my sister goes, look, we're Catholic. Just go away. Leave us alone. So the kids were they were thrown into a quandary. They're like, wait. She's you're Catholic, but you're not that's not the answer we're expecting from you.

Cornelius Davis [00:10:35]:

We expect you to say that, you know, you've done sacraments and works and stuff like that. That's what they were expecting me to say. I didn't know that was the answer. I didn't know that no one had had given me that script. What I knew were all these scripture verses that I'd heard multiple times, many times growing up, and I somehow integrated them in my mind somewhere, and I just thought everybody believes this. Right? I mean, this is what we read, so this must be what we believe. So Mhmm. And so when they walked away, they had left a tract.

Cornelius Davis [00:11:11]:

I looked at my sister and I said, they don't think we believe in Jesus. There's a gigantic Jesus hanging in almost every Catholic church. How do they think we don't believe in Jesus? And she said, they're just closed minded. Just ignore them. Just don't think about that. And so then you flash forward to college where my, roommate was a former young lifer who invites me to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. And that was important because when I got involved in InterVarsity, everyone expected me to know know nothing about the bible. But I was Catholic, but I grew up in the North Carolina in the Bible Belt.

Cornelius Davis [00:11:52]:

So there was a bible open in our house at all times. And my mom, while she was still alive, would change periodically change the story from, like, Samson to Noah to, you know, Balaam and the talking donkey. She would choose stories she knew I would or my sisters would be intrigued by. And she didn't tell us to read it. She just flipped it and left it. And she knew that a curious kid like me, I'm gonna walk by and go, oh, wait. This is different. What is it? Oh.

Cornelius Davis [00:12:26]:

Oh, a talking donkey? That's crazy. This is a crazy story, and I would read the whole story trying to figure out what the context of it was because it's just a crazy story. And that's kind of how lots of different Bible stories got integrated into me. So when we're going to these bible studies, they were all like, how as a Catholic do you know all this stuff? And it's just because of the funky upbringing I had. And it wasn't till later on that I started getting challenged that I actually read the the catechism, and I realized, oh, wait. The salvation story here is messed up. That's not the bible. That that's Mhmm.

Cornelius Davis [00:13:08]:

You know, where did this come? Oh, council of Trent. Oh, council of Nicaea. Wait a second. And knowing the revelation passage, it said you can't add or subtract from scripture. I was like, oh, this is problematic. And that's where the transition occurred.

Jim Spiegel [00:13:26]:

So what, if any, unique challenges do you think that Christians face in your field? And and how do you cope with those?

Cornelius Davis [00:13:36]:

Well, I think that, one of the primary things is that, physicians on the whole have a god complex. And it's to varying degrees, but you think that because we're dealing with health and wellness, I therefore preserve life. I am the preserver of life. And so they start seeing themselves as having abilities over life and death that you don't have. And, frequently, they'll get disillusioned when they recognize failure in their performance that's resulted in some bad outcome because they legitimately believe they control life and death, and you don't. They don't have any control over that. You have control over whether you execute the standard of care. That you have control over.

Cornelius Davis [00:14:28]:

And how are you executing it to the highest current standard of care? That you control. You have to have educated yourself to that level. You have to have trained yourself to do it, you know, without thinking, and you have to do it consistently. So your attention has to be, on tune at all times. And if you're doing that, that's the best you can do as a human. But I will think, there was a heart surgeon in Boston when I was there who would walk in a patient's room and say, good morning. God is here, and here are my angels, referring to his, nurse practitioners. And I can remember an intern coming to me and and telling me this, and I said, he actually said that? And he said, yeah.

Cornelius Davis [00:15:21]:

I wanted to back out of the room before the lightning bolt came through and struck him dead. And I said, wow. That that that that gives you that's that's some hubris right there. It's not uncommon that people have that mentality. So when you have somebody who has a more humble view of themselves, you stick out like a like a red thumb. Mhmm.

Jim Spiegel [00:15:47]:

Have you ever sensed any tension between science and scripture as someone who's, working in a scientific field?

Cornelius Davis [00:15:56]:

Yeah.

Jim Spiegel [00:15:56]:

How how do you, personally integrate your faith in science?

Cornelius Davis [00:16:02]:

Okay. So that's a that's a fun question for me because I think the deeper you get into science and the more you understand it, the more it confirms Christianity. And you see any number of high level scientists who come to Christianity due to their science, not due to anything else, they get so, they see the level of design that exists in their field, and they there's no other explanation. There's a designer. You can't get away from it. So it's a circumstance that I think it it happens. It it it confirms itself. I don't feel any tension at all.

Cornelius Davis [00:16:49]:

I will, in fact, say to people, my faith is proven by science, and I can do that on multiple different levels. I can do it through chemistry. There was a point where I I I've taught multiple I've taught everything from high school to graduate school. And in all of those, I tend to point out the researchers who are Christians, and there are a giant number of the scientific giants were Christians. I have had time periods where you will get a principle and the, principle states such as, complexity. Irid how about irreducible complexity? You'll get to something we keep un unraveling layers and layers of how something works, and we get lower, there's more complexity. We get lower, there's more complexity. We get lower, there's more complexity.

Cornelius Davis [00:17:49]:

You have to go back to Darwin's words. If you can find an example of irreducible irreducible complexity, then my theories are of no substance, and they aren't because irreducible complexity is all over the place, particularly within the human body.

Jim Spiegel [00:18:08]:

So explain that. Give, give our listeners a definition of irreducible complexity.

Cornelius Davis [00:18:13]:

So let's say you go from a superstructure, and let's talk about the heart. You know? That's my area. So it's a muscular pump, and it's a muscular pump that has nerves in it. It has, vessels that bring blood to it, the arteries. It has vessels that move blood away from it, the coronary veins. It has lymphatic vessels that are moving fluids from the cells themselves away and out of the heart, and that's just the superstructure. And then you go down into the actual muscle fibers themselves, and these muscle fibers have an array of actin and fibrin, you know, molecules within them and, mitochondria and nuclei and, all the other machinery that is needed to work continuously. A heart never take gets to take a break.

Cornelius Davis [00:19:07]:

It works continuously, and then you go down to the next level. Oh, wait a second. There's signaling going on between the blood vessels and the muscle cells themselves. And then you get down to the next level that, oh, there's messaging going on within the muscle fibers, going up in the different elements of the mitochondria and the nuclei are are are talking to each other. And then you go down lower than that, and you're saying, oh, well, there's a DNA setup that results in proteins being made, and those proteins feedback on how much the DNA gets replicated and and the production of proteins for the different organelles within the cell itself. Oh, we can go deeper than that. Okay. These actual DNA molecules are made up of these compounds, and these compounds have these extra agents on them.

Cornelius Davis [00:20:05]:

And then it goes deeper than that. You just keep going lower and lower and lower, and the more you know, you just get to the lower level. And then the more you know, there's another lower level. And each of these levels is extremely complex, and it and that is the definition of irreducible complexity. You can never get down to the bottom and say, okay. This is the smallest element present within a, myocyte because at every point, we get to our lower one and then we say, oh, wait a second. This is affected by electrical fields, which the heart is this giant electrical field, which is why we can do EKGs. It's a electrical representation of the conduction through the heart.

Cornelius Davis [00:20:53]:

But there these little microcircuits that exist within the heart that are beneath those, so it never ends. It just never all all your research ends up with and I've done so much research in my life. All it does is end up with more questions about the lower level Mhmm. Which you don't understand. And then a generation later, you you have figured out the lower level, and that revealed an even lower level.

Jim Spiegel [00:21:23]:

There's also the the fact that you have all these different structures and functions that are not there are no precursor, more simple forms that would lead up to it from an evolutionary standpoint that would be functional. And that's true of everything from blood clotting to definitely, DNA and and RNA. That whole system needs to be in place, or there's no functionality at all. And something that, was pointed out to me when I was, an undergraduate in studying anatomy myself, regarding the sinoaricular node. Yeah. It it isn't that what triggers each heartbeat? Correct me if I'm wrong there.

Cornelius Davis [00:22:11]:

Is it Yeah.

Jim Spiegel [00:22:11]:

It does. Isn't there a a mystery concerning that exactly? Yeah. Why how does that continue to do that? Is that still mysterious?

Cornelius Davis [00:22:21]:

Well, they know a lot more about it, but all the I don't think anyone feels that we know everything about it. So this is an area that that, of its own decides to send out a signal, and that signal gets transmitted through the heart down to another node that is in between the top two chambers and the bottom two chambers, the atrioventricular node. So this first node talks to this second node, and it sends a signal down, and the first one says contract. And so the top two chambers contract, simultaneously sending a signal down to the other node that is just the precise delay so that when the first two contractions fill the lower chambers up with blood, then that node says contract. And then the lower two chambers, contract and send the blood out into the body or to the lungs. And it's all timed perfectly. And the incredible thing about it is, what if one of these stops working correctly, which happen not infrequently? And let's say that first sinoatrial node doesn't send out a signal. There are redundant areas in the upper two chambers that will send out a backup signal to say, oh, SA no didn't work.

Cornelius Davis [00:23:52]:

Here, send out a signal. So because we gotta keep contracting going on or else we all die.

Jim Spiegel [00:23:58]:

Mhmm.

Cornelius Davis [00:23:59]:

Because the heart's one of the rare organs in the body that if it stops working, everything dies. You can be brain dead and the body's still alive. That's when they do, you know, organ transplantation on individuals whose brain is dead. But if the heart is dead, you are dead. So there are these backup areas that will send signals to make up for it. And when you get, say, atrial fibrillation is a condition that's very common. You'll hear people talk about, oh, I have AFib. That's a condition where those top two chambers start sending out signals just willy nilly, and it messes up the timing of contraction.

Cornelius Davis [00:24:43]:

So the bottom chambers don't get filled with blood in a full measure. And so then they can't push all the blood out to the body to the degree that they would if everything was working in sequence the way it was supposed should be. But the upside is by having these redundant pathways, if your SA node decides not to work, you stay alive because those backup signals will keep you alive. Although you can't exert yourself to the same degree, you'll still be alive. And that's the beauty of the design, all the redundancies. And you see this in all organs. All the organs have these redundant pathways. If something doesn't work, oh, this redundant pathway comes in and, kicks in.

Jim Spiegel [00:25:37]:

Wow. So is there anything, is there anything about your work, as a cardiac specialist that, you would say has, kind of not just shown you evidence of design, but actually instructed you theologically and and taught you certain specific things about the the mind of the maker. Right? And how God thinks. And maybe informed other aspects of your theology in a substantive way.

Cornelius Davis [00:26:09]:

Well, it's not it's not a coincidence that the word leb that's all throughout scripture is like depending on your translation, it's used 877 times, give or take, and that's heart, the word heart in scripture. It's extremely common in scripture. And, you realize that the function of the heart is critically important to everything you do, and the Lord says so. And so if you look at, say, Matthew 12, and the Lord is talking to them, he's talking to the Pharisees and calling them a generation of vipers, and it says, you know, for out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And so what's in your heart will dictate everything that comes out of you, your words, your actions, your deeds, your sentiment, your nervousness, your fears, your what's in your heart critically affects everything else. Well, in actual physiology, the performance of your heart controls all your other organs because when someone has heart failure, their liver doesn't function correctly. Mhmm. And so all the function of the liver go off.

Cornelius Davis [00:27:34]:

If you have sufficient heart failure, the kidneys don't filter appropriately, and they get overburdened with demands, and they don't get the level of blood flow that they should get. If your heart failure gets bad enough, it starts affecting your brain's ability to function. In addition to the fact that when the other organs aren't working correctly, the hormones and chemicals that those organs are supposed to create, they all affect the brain. So it's one of those circumstances where you see the beauty of scriptures description of of heart functions, and it's talking more the seat of the will and emotions and decisions. But you see it it it they align beautifully in that the heart controls everything else. And in your body, the heart con supports and controls everything else. Mhmm. So it's completely aligned.

Jim Spiegel [00:28:32]:

Yeah. It's powerful metaphor. So one of the kind of perennial questions, regarding the relationship between faith and sciences concerns miracles, the possibility of miracles. Do you believe that miracles, still occur today? And if so, do you think that you have personally witnessed a miracle in the context of your work?

Cornelius Davis [00:28:57]:

Right. So I'm not a cessationist. So, yes, I think miracles happen today. And, yes, I have witnessed them. So, you know, people will say, oh, you really think I I actually, worship with a number of people who are cessationists. And, they will say, do you really think these are miracles? You know? So they'll question a circumstance that I'm describing as just this is just a rare natural phenomenon. And, but what you see are things that defy the current laws of science. So is it possible that this is a, natural phenomena that is just, you know, outside the realm of of our experience, I guess, but some of them defy laws.

Cornelius Davis [00:29:56]:

And when that happens, that's falling into the miraculous range.

Jim Spiegel [00:30:01]:

What would be an example that you've witnessed?

Cornelius Davis [00:30:03]:

Okay. So this one's, one when I was a fellow, and I'm at, University of Texas Houston large hospital. And, the service there does a, great deal of work on individuals with aneurysms and basic severe heart conditions. And so, you're doing very large operations on individuals who are very sick, and there's always this life death line that's being walked with these individuals. This one individual had, been losing the losing the fight, and all the organs were failing, and the patient was receiving jet fuel through the IVs and maximal ventilator assistance, and everything was going downhill. And you know things are dire when, the internationally famous attending who is in charge of everything walks up and you're reviewing everything that's going on, and he looked at me and he said, well, there's nothing to say here. The this this war is lost. And at that very time period that the family was had surrounded the patient because they had told the family this, and they were praying over the patient.

Cornelius Davis [00:31:31]:

And this attending was a very loud mouth atheist, and he loved to make fun of Christians. And in the operating room, he would, you know, wax poetic about the insanity of Christianity and challenge people to it, but he would never challenge me, ever. And I was always ready. I mean, I had I had that sword ready to go, and I was thinking, I know what I would say to this, but out of respect, I said nothing. But he never he he would he challenged everybody in the room except me. Wasn't gonna go there. And so, and I always thought that why why won't he take me on? A very, very intelligent, accomplished individual wanted nothing to do with me with regard to Christianity. And so, he looked at me and he goes, well, young man, do you think that their prayers are gonna have any effect? And I said, time's gonna tell, sir.

Cornelius Davis [00:32:42]:

And, he said, indeed. Time will tell. Well, later that day and into the night and through the night, the patient just changed. Everything changed. Organs started turning on that had been off for a week. It just it's it's like, you know, someone just flicked the switch, and everything turned around. And there were things that cannot turn around, like you were too far down the loss of function road to turn around. They started turning around.

Cornelius Davis [00:33:16]:

Was there kidney failure starting? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The kidneys were failed. And that they it wasn't it wasn't just a little bit of failure. They were failed. We were giving, you can't do dialysis on these patients, but we were giving a variation of dialysis to the patient continuously in order to get the toxins out of the body.

Jim Spiegel [00:33:37]:

The kidneys That's a goner, man.

Cornelius Davis [00:33:39]:

Yeah. I mean, along with everything else that was going on. And everything comes on. It's just and and so all night long, I was turning down the rocket fuel because it was too much. So I'm I'm turning things off. You know? I'm weaning everything down. So by morning, we're doing rounds, and I didn't say anything to him. I merely gave here the here's the data.

Cornelius Davis [00:34:05]:

And I went through the whole and this I this was turned down to that. I've got this down to this. I've got this down to that. This is the the, you know, the kidney we have some urine output now. Blah blah blah blah. I finished. I didn't look at him. I purposefully.

Cornelius Davis [00:34:22]:

I didn't like, See that, sir? I didn't look at him. And so he said, he didn't give any orders as change this, change that. He said nothing, which is not like him at all. And he said, he said, well, and he starts walking to the next patient. And so as I'm walking to the next patient, he looks over at me and he says, well, if you think I'm gonna admit that some god intervened there, you have another thing coming. And I said, we all have a choice, sir. We all have a choice. And so here you see something that can't be described by natural un as as being natural that you understand that people that don't believe in God, they look at the data, they see the objective evidence of his presence, and they say, I refuse to believe.

Cornelius Davis [00:35:29]:

I see the evidence, and I can't explain it any other way, but I refuse to believe. I don't want to, and I'm not going to. And sad as that is, it's the reality of the human condition.

Jim Spiegel [00:35:44]:

The will is always involved. That it is a matter of commitment in the end, and, human beings are notoriously creative in terms of finding excuses not to believe even when they're immediate witnesses of of the miraculous. Right. That's that's quite a story. It's it's very instructive. So what would be your sense of the prevalence of belief in miracles among your peers?

Cornelius Davis [00:36:15]:

Well, I would say the majority do not believe in I would say if you could took physicians, you'd have about 10% of them are Christians. And if you took physicians, I would say, about 20% believe there is a, God, but they don't think they think it's just some God out there, you know, sort of deists. Mhmm. So now you got, well, you got 35% of the physicians, and then the others think there is no God, and that they are the arbiter of what goes on, in their existence. And that's a very high percentage.

Jim Spiegel [00:37:06]:

Yeah. So you'd be you'd certainly be an outlier then in your profession. Definitely.

Cornelius Davis [00:37:12]:

I was the kook. Mhmm. I guess some still think I'm a kook.

Jim Spiegel [00:37:16]:

Well, that's been said about a lot of Christians over the centuries. Right? So let's talk about near death experiences. As you know, reports of NDEs, have been on the rise for many years now. It's become kind of a cottage industry. You have a a whole, research program, at the university of Virginia. And then at some other places devoted to studying these cases, literally hundreds of thousands of reports of people who, you know, their heart stops beating and maybe even there's a flat EEG, electroencephalogram. There's no brain activity. And yet they, when they're resuscitated, they report all sorts of, substantive experiences.

Jim Spiegel [00:38:04]:

In many cases, they're corroborated. Right? They check out. Have you encountered, any or many NDE cases over the years? And if you have, how has that impacted your work and your faith perspective?

Cornelius Davis [00:38:19]:

Okay. Definitely, I have encountered it, and, it hadn't affected my faith at all. I think that, let's begin that I I believe that, the lord knows our life before it occurs. He knows everything about it. It was written down before the foundations of the earth. And so, because of that, he knows precisely when you will die completely. Your physical body will die. And, I hate to quote Billy Crystal, miracle, Max, and princess bride, but nearly dead is is quite a bit different than completely dead.

Cornelius Davis [00:39:07]:

And, mostly dead is still somewhat alive. And so these individuals that we describe as having, near death experiences, I see as somewhat alive yet lacking, evidence of brain or heart activities. So I don't think that their descriptions inform us anything about, eternal consequences or, the state of the hereafter when one is completely dead. And let me tell you why. I'm gonna give you an example of a patient that I had. I was an intern at Duke. I was on the heart surgery service, and they had monitors set up so that, you could keep an eye on the the EKG of all patients on the floor. I would keep my eye up on the monitors.

Cornelius Davis [00:40:12]:

And as I glanced up, I saw one go from this individual's EKG was never normal, but it went from their their normal to flat line. And it was an individual that had heart failure that was waiting for a heart transplant. And I ran into the room, and at that time period, part of the resuscitation was that you gave them a hard hit upon the chest in order to, attempt to extinguish whatever heart rhythm they had, and then you would begin compressions, which is what I did. And, we almost stopped the code because it had gone on for such a long time period, And I did something that I normally would not do, which is I turned around to my chief who was talking about stopping the code, and I said, give him a little bit longer. Give him a little bit longer. I I think he's gonna come back. And he looked at me like, you idiot intern. You don't know anything.

Cornelius Davis [00:41:18]:

This guy's got a a heart the size of a football. This heart is not gonna come back. We went, and about five minutes later, he came back. He and he was gonna he was trying to prove to me, you don't know what you're talking about, you little dumb little intern. But he came back. He got transferred to the ICU where I wasn't taking care of him. And so I went to visit him a couple of days down the line, and I walked into the room and he had already been he was on a ventilator initially, but it had the tube removed, so he was speaking again. And I walked into the room and he said, doctor Batman.

Cornelius Davis [00:41:56]:

And I said, what? And he goes, doctor Batman. He goes, came into my room and hit me in the chest. That hurt. And I said, you remember that? And he I said, your eyes were rolled back into the back of your head and you were flat lined. You had no blood pressure. And he said, I when I get well, I am going to hit you just as hard as you hit me. And I said, hey. You know, you you are alive, and, you know, I was kinda part of the team that kept you going.

Cornelius Davis [00:42:32]:

And I was I was thinking to myself, and I was the one that convinced them to keep going because they were gonna stop, but I didn't say I never told them that. And so, we joked around about it. And when he got back on the ward, he I said, that was pretty close. And he goes, nah, one of many. I said, what do you mean by that? And he goes, oh, I've I've coded this that was the sixth time I've coded. I said, you've coded six times? And he said, well, including that one. And I said he goes, oh, they pronounced me dead one time before. What? When was this? And he said, oh, that was a year ago, and I was on the medical team, and they pronounced me dead.

Cornelius Davis [00:43:17]:

And, they went out to talk to my family, and I could see the nurse, and she was cleaning me up and and disconnecting things. And and, I said, well, what was it like? And he said, well, he goes, I was watching her cleaning me up and straightening the the linens and that sort of thing, And then I saw the the bright light, and I was like, the bright light. And he said, yeah. And then I was in this room, and there's this old boy in the corner of the room with 10 gallon hat on. And I said, god likes country and western? And he said, no. It wasn't god. It was it was Hank Williams junior. And I said, you you mean Hank Williams senior? Hank Williams junior is still alive.

Cornelius Davis [00:44:05]:

He goes, who was there? Me or you? I'm telling you, it was Hank Williams junior. I said, okay. Okay. I'm not telling you you don't know your story. Okay. So what did Hank Williams junior do? And he said he had his head dipped down so his brim was covering his face, and he raised his head up, and he said, it's not your time. And he goes, and then I was back in my body looking up at the ceiling, and I breathed and I was no longer he wasn't connected to the ventilator anymore. And so the nurse heard him go out through his his, his, endotracheal tube.

Cornelius Davis [00:44:49]:

And she startled, and she was like, wait. What? Wait. And so she connects up the monitors, and he's got a rhythm. And she was like, oh, he's alive. He's alive. And so she went running out to, a a doctor who was a friend of mine, and she and that she was informing the family that he had passed away. And And she went in and she said, doctor so and so, doctor so and so, you need to come. You need to come.

Cornelius Davis [00:45:17]:

And she looked at her and was like, do you not know what I'm doing here? She goes, no. You need to come. You need to come right away. Long story short, he was back. And, despite the fact that they had had him disconnected for about five to seven minutes, he was very much back and fine. He eventually ended up getting his heart transplant. I was walking between the hospitals. This is maybe a year later.

Cornelius Davis [00:45:45]:

And I see this guy, dark tan. Oops. Didn't think anything of it. And he said, doctor Batman. And I looked over and I said, Jimmy, yeah, I'm doing well. Just back for a clinic visit. And I said, you're tan. He goes, I'm playing golf.

Cornelius Davis [00:46:06]:

I got that 16 year old heart, and I can play golf again. Wow. You know, experiences like that, you know, he sees a person who's living. Okay? So clearly, Hank Williams Junior doesn't exist in this world and in eternity simultaneously. So what I believe is and and sort of reflecting off of your podcast where you talked about NDEs with the professor from Virginia, You know, I see NDEs as the Lord wants to draw every person walking on this planet to him. That's his ultimate goal. So he will use what he thinks is the best way of drawing you to him. For some of them, according to doctor Zigarelli, it's like fifteen percent.

Cornelius Davis [00:47:02]:

The experience is a negative view. The horrible things, hell, fire, you know, scary things. Some people are can be scared straight. Some people, it's positive things that could draw them to and so you see from the, atheist art professor that you referenced, he got pulled because of something positive. He saw that as evidence of, oh, Jesus exists. I didn't know this. So the positive thing drew him to Christ, but he wants every person drawn to him. He just uses what he thinks is the best form of, stimulus to draw you to him.

Jim Spiegel [00:47:47]:

Yeah. Interesting. And that's quite a novel story there. Probably a relief that, that that patient, Jimmy, you say, that he didn't he didn't hit you in the chest as he had threatened.

Cornelius Davis [00:48:01]:

He he he never hit me.

Jim Spiegel [00:48:04]:

So you are, obviously driven by an ultimate sense of purpose. I think that's true of, all devout Christians. How would you sum up your your sense of purpose as a cardiac specialist?

Cornelius Davis [00:48:20]:

I got asked I I did an inter I was interviewing, for residency at Mayo Clinic, and the professor asked me, okay. You do a technically, proficient operation. And on the first postoperative day, the patient dies, surprisingly, out of the blue, dies. They said, what do you tell the family? And I say, well, I would one go and inform them that their loved one had died. I would tell them that it's we it's unclear to us why they died because this was a surprise to all of us. I would say that, we didn't identify anything in the operation that would inform why this would have happened. And I would, support them in their grief for loss of a loved one. And they said, he said, well, how would you deal with that? I mean, you just did an operation and your patient died.

Cornelius Davis [00:49:28]:

And I thought, oh boy, how am I gonna avoid this one? Because that goes to my, my spiritual beliefs. And I said, well, it kinda depends on how you put your world together. I said, the way I put my world together, I don't determine who lives and dies. And the way I, see things, I am in control of my performance. So if I executed my training and my, knowledge to the best of my ability, there's nothing more I can do. There's nothing I can't do any more than that. And, I don't determine who lives and dies, so I don't really have to worry about that because I don't believe that I control that. I do control my performance.

Cornelius Davis [00:50:23]:

I do control my attention to excellence. I do control whether I've been trained to the max that is possible by current knowledge, that I control. Other than that, I don't control that. So I just move on because if someone if it's their time to die, they are dying. And so he said, interesting. So when I was picked up from the interview, it was a friend of ours who's a Christian, and he said, how was your interviews? And I said, I think I screwed one of them up. The guy asked me a a complete religious question, and there's no way for me to duck it. And so, you know, if he has a beef with Christians, then I'm a dead goose.

Cornelius Davis [00:51:11]:

And he said, well, which professor was it? And I told him, and he said, don't worry. He goes to my church. He's got a lot of kids. He's a strong Christian. He'll love that answer.

Jim Spiegel [00:51:20]:

That's good.

Cornelius Davis [00:51:21]:

And so I said, okay. So, I mean, you know, in your in your, daily performance of your trade, I look at it as I'm performing to please him, not just serve the patient. I'm trying to please him. His bar is really high, so it keeps you stretching at all time periods. Even this many years into my practice, I still need to be stretching because there's always new stuff that's coming along, new ways to improve. So you have to constantly be diligent to improve so that you're offering your patients the cutting edge of what's available internationally.

Jim Spiegel [00:52:04]:

The cutting edge, so to speak. Yeah. Well, this has been great. Thank you for this time. I really appreciate it, Cornelius.

Cornelius Davis [00:52:14]:

Oh, this is always interesting to speak about these. I think that, it should be more common that you see, Christians involved in health care, because that's what our creator is involved in. He's the ultimate physician. And so I think it flows very easily from our faith to, caring for for people's physical bodies.

Jim Spiegel [00:52:38]:

Amen. Good stuff. Thank you for listening to the Kalos Center podcast. We gave you our thoughts. Now let us know what you think. Email us at podcast@kalos.center.