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Science Attempts To Explain Heaven
Hugh Pickens writes "Lisa Miller writes in Newsweek about the thesis that heaven is not a real place, or even a process or a supernatural event, but rather something that happens in your brain as you die. The thesis is based, in part, on a growing body of research around near-death experience. According to a 2000 article by Bruce Greyson in The Lancet, between 9 and 18 percent of people who have been demonstrably near death report having had an NDE. Surveys of NDE accounts show great similarities in the details, describing: a tunnel, a light, a gate or a door, a sense of being out of the body, meeting people they know or have heard about, finding themselves in the presence of God, and then returning, changed. Scientists have theorized that NDEs occur as a kind of physiological self-defense mechanism when, in order to guard against damage during trauma, the brain releases protective chemicals that also happen to trigger intense hallucinations. This theory has gained traction after scientists realized that virtually all the features of an NDE can be reproduced with a stiff dose of ketamine, a short-acting, hallucinogenic, dissociative anesthetic. 'I came out into a golden Light. I rose into the Light and found myself having an unspoken interchange with the Light, which I believed to be God,' wrote one user of his experience under ketamine. 'Dante said it better,' writes Miller, 'but the vision is astonishingly the same.'"
How can one test that which does not exist?
Asking science to study God is like asking it to study Tom Bombadil. It can't. It's FICTION.
Circumcision is child abuse.
science is the PERFECT tool for explaining the world around us. the fact that it is slowly disassembling religous nonsense is a side effect.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Its all the same thing. Religion cant be proved, so its fantasy.
Science, however, can be proven if the theories are correct. ( and if they aren't correct and thus cant be proven, well they were just a fantasy too )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I agree, the Pope is bunk.
-- A Lutheran
It also takes away the power of people like the Vatican screwing over the poor for larger cathedrals, and more power of more people. Ever wondered what makes it right for a poor family in Phillipines giving their last Pesos to the church to bury a family member, whilst the Pope sits in a palace that dwarfs any king's palace. Now that's morals for you.
Have you ever actually looked into what the pope does? Yeah it's a great job, you get to spend most of your time praying, being swarmed by crowds, sermon after sermon after sermon, being made to travel here and there to visit this and that group, and you even get the joy of having people bash you without having a clue what you do or how you live. Yeah the pope lives in a big building, but does that mean he actually gets to enjoy it? Who cares if you live in a castle if you live like a peasant? Sure he gets a vacation once in a great while, but I'm pretty sure I have more days off than him. So if he's scamming people out of their money, it isn't a very profitable scam. He's got a stupid looking car, a boring life that lacks entertainment beyond church music, and a lot haters.
Besides that, Catholics only donate to the Holy See once a year, the regular donations go to the local diocese (which are generally very ostensibly poor, anyway). All such donations are optional, too, and no one can be denied any service for not donating. A whole world of donations even once a year is a lot of money, but it's nothing after you pay for all the upkeep of the medieval and Renaissance churches and the operating cost of the governing body of a worldwide organization.
Seriously, do some research before you bash someone.
Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.
The pope is god on earth, so from their point of view, he deserves a big palace.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
the hostility comes from all the choices religous groups take away from us, forcing their faith on us all. stem cell research? can't have that. abortion? can't have that.
instead of just letting people live their lives, their faith forces them to interfer.
People can't live their lives if they're being aborted.