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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.'"

7 of 692 comments (clear)

  1. Re:finally... by Narcocide · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    +1 Funny

  2. Re:Science = religion by tjstork · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    whilst the Pope sits in a palace that dwarfs any king's palace. Now that's morals for you.

    How about the morals of big hollywood making billions of dollars throwing poor people in jail for copying a movie or a song, about feeding the poor? The Vatican doesn't even have as much money as minor movie studio, just a lot of old stuff that frankly isn't worth very much.

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  3. Re:Science = religion by Draconius42 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    This is exactly the problem with liberals. They have no distinction between voluntarily giving something and having something taken by force.

  4. Re:finally... by squiggly12 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    blargh, posting to correct mod.

  5. Re:Science = religion by blackraven14250 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    You speak as if a republican didn't just run the economy for eight years, and contribute to it nearly collapsing, and start one completely unnecessary war, which killed many soldiers on both sides who didn't need to die.

  6. In related news ... by PPH · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    ... Hell has also been explained.

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  7. Re:Science = religion by Alsee · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    This is exactly the problem with liberals. They have no distinction between voluntarily giving something and having something taken by force.

    I can't wait until conservatives get into power, and the large percentage of taxes going to pay the military become a "voluntary giving" rather than being taken by force. Not to mention all the money to run the courts and to pay the police and fire departments and roads and about ten thousand other things.

    Or perhaps your argument about "taken by force" is total bull, and you are just quibbling over how you would like to spend it.

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