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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.'"
Next you'll be trying to tell us God doesn't exist.
And we all 'evolved from apes'.
And the iPad is a game-changer.
I remember that Robert J. Sawyer's Neanderthal Paralax books mentioned that religious experiences can be triggered by electrical fields as well, kind of a reverse MRI i think? I'm pretty sure that part was based on actual research.
Hmmm, a quick google search turns up this article on reading such experiences with an MRI, but i think there was a way to trigger them too.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Blind people still "see." Brain pathways have simply been remapped so that the "vision" parts of the brain are now associated with other senses.
If you blindfold yourself, and navigate the world by touch, you will still instinctively build a "picture" of the world around you. The spatial cognitive portions of your brain that are usually excited by vision, will come to be associated with touch, or other senses. After years, your neural pathways will remap themselves.
In people who are born blind, those spatial picture generating portions of their brain are still functional, but more closely attuned to nonvisual senses. So they can still "see" in that they generate a spatial impression of the world around them.
They've done experiments with artificial vision systems based on the receptors in your tongue, remapping and training the brain to "see" via your tongue's tactile receptors rather than your eyes.
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.
. . . by taking stiff doses of ketamine. You don't want to enter such a difficult level as death without enough experience.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I'm also curious about people who see hell which none of the articles mention. I've read accounts of people feeling that they move to hell when they die and experience either eternal loneliness or demons eating them, etc. Apparently a small minority of NDEs are negative. None of the articles linked mention negative NDEs. I wonder if hell may be the effect ketamine has on some people just like some drugs have different effects on different minds. Or perhaps a different chemical is produced entirely maybe hell is part of the trauma that occurs if ketamine is not released. I've noticed an apparent similarity between waking and NDE. In both circumstances a small amount of time can seem feel very long. It would be very interesting to learn how a defensive chemical interacts with the activity in the brain that occurs as one is dying and comparing to other psychological phenomena
This does explain the prevalence of concept though.
It's safe to assume people were experiencing various NDEs for a looong time, especially in more dangerous times - remember they didn't have to survive their injuries for long, just long enough to tell somebody. This even fits as one of the factors why people were so much more fixated on religion in brutal times.
One that hath name thou can not otter
I think real scientists should stay well away from this kinda crap, if you got to research what happens when people die, don't link it to heaven.
It is like "scientist" trying to explain Bible myths. How could Moses have parted the seas, what could have caused the plagues etc.
That is like a bad episode of myth-busters where they test movie stunts. What they do first is try to convince people that a scene in the movie is somehow real and has to follow real world physics and then disprove it... learn to seperate fantasy from reality for Christ damn, for god's sake oh fuck it.
All the happenings in the Bible can be explained very simply if you think of it as a bunch of Fantasy written by people who wanted to create a religion. There is even clear evidence that the Bible is fabricated. Even its followed accept that the New Testament was created from seperate books, edited with some parts and books left out completely. So we know that it is edited. No truly religious person would dare to edit the word of god, so what made the person who edited the new testament decide to think he could do this?
And low and behold, if you think of it as a bad hack job, then suddenly it all makes sense. And we know religions can be entirely fabricated. Scientology anyone?
It is amusing to see a program on trying to explain the story around Moses, when nothing in the historical record mentions this at all. Explain the parting of the red seas, but not why an exodus of slaves was not mentioned in Egyptian records. Now that is science. Up next, myth-busters and the geographic channel examine how a grandmother and a little girl can fit in a wolves stomach whole. Leave your brain at the door.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Taking away our believes, in a better life afterwards, makes people lose hope for this live, losing the moral, making humankind do all kind of bad things, making live for themselves or for others unlivable.
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.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
I was in bed in the early morning, I just awoke a couple of minutes before. Without prior warning it felt like all my internal organs started to move up through my trachea. I sensed I was paralyzed, unable to stop it and immediately I felt something like a heart stroke. I thought I had only a few seconds left. In those few seconds everything I had done, still had wanted to do, the implications for my family members went through my head. The brain has an enormous extra capacity when it is needed. I never felt the urge to resist or panicked, just to accept the inevitable. It later turned out my diaphragm had ruptured and my stomach had gone through that hole, collapsing my left lung and displacing my heart by 10 centimeter. It took five years to diagnose correctly.
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
I challenge anyone create a testable hypothesis on whether there is a soul or life after death or heaven etc. What this experiment is testing for is a correlation between chemical processes in the brain when a person nears death and the subjective experience of said person. Where does the existence of heaven or supernatural events even come into this? Those are questions that shouldn't come into play when speaking of science. Whether an objective explanation of a subjective experience nullifies the "reality" of it or not is philosophical has nothing to do with the experiment in question. This is a bunch of horseshit.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
I've heard about these type of studies for years, and the explanations they pose. The problem is, most of the time when people experience NDE, they, are, um... dead. They have no brain waves and no heart beat. The key item being is NO BRAIN ELECTRICAL ACTIVITY. Science, I love you, but dead men dream no dreams, including about the after life. So please explain to me how a brain that is flat line on the monitor is producing, and i quote you "intense hallucinations"
The problem with science is that they are missing the moral factor
That's no more a problem with science than it is a problem with lollipops, stars, and waterfalls.
And actually, I find that tying ethics with religion is deeply problematic. It leads to failing to question moral teachings brought about by a religion which might in some cases be bad, very bad. You need to examine and think critically and philosophically abour morals and ethics, for yours to actually be moral and ethical.
allowing them to do everything that only hurts us, or destroys our world...Taking away our believes, in a better life afterwards, makes people lose hope for this live, losing the moral, making humankind do all kind of bad things, making live for themselves or for others unlivable.
The dominant religions on this planet teach that there will be a world-ending apocalypse but the faithful will be whisked away to a better place. *That* allows people to destroy our world. Lacking belief in an afterlife makes this world far more precious; a thing that must be protected because there is, as yet, nowhere else for us to go.
I would astonished to hear that religious non-scientific people polluted more than scientific non-religious people; I know of absolutely no evidence of this. This of course excludes the category of scientific-religious and non-scientific-non-religious, which your post also seems to exclude.
This brings me back to your original statement:
Science is religion, today people don't believe in religion anymore, they believe in science...
I'd like you to define "science", because it's not the standard definition. Strictly speaking, if you don't believe in science, you're an extreme moron. Religion is a set of unproven beliefs taken on faith, science is a process that explicitly excludes faith. Science works, that's how we figured out how to make computers, and refrigerators, and so on. It's up to you to figure out if the process of science has lead to conclusions that contradict your religion. I think it does, but you're not necessarily an extreme moron if you disagree.
I'm pretty sure you're confusing science with some set of conclusions from some scientists, but I'm not going to set up straw arguments, I need you to tell me.
People are living worse everyday, no moral anymore, lots of sickness, more struggles, no hope, and still science believes they are god...
People are living better today than they ever have in the history of the Universe, "no moral anymore" is a context-free statement but I can tell you that at least in the US and Canada youth violence is at an all-time low (and, as they say, children are our future), disease is similarly at record low levels for the past several decades, "more struggles" is again ill-defined (there are more people alive than there used to be, so I don't doubt we have more absolute struggles), there's a whole tonne of hope all over the place, and "still science believes they are god" doesn't mean anything at all and is frankly confusing.
They "saw" things? What is "saw"? You mean their eyes were open when their heart stopped beating and they actually responded to visual stimulus? They were shown pictures of the 1933 Yankees and recognized Babe Ruth? What is "saw"?
Am I "seeing" when I dream? Is that heaven I'm seeing? I mean it could be, but last night I had monsters chasing me in my dreams and I hope there are no monsters in heaven or there's been some false advertising going on. The dream I had where I was banging Izabel Goulart, now that might have been heaven. (Go ahead, google Izabel Goulart, I'll wait...Seriously. It's worth it.)
Let's take your question again:
Perhaps you should write to the researchers who are mentioned in the article above and ask them why their theory doesn't explain every single thing in the world that the superstitions might want to present as evidence for an afterlife?
Please understand, it's possible these researchers were not actually trying to spoil your Easter by disproving the existence of God, OK? So don't get your eternal soul in a twist.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Science makes no claims towards what it is not. Science comes with error bars. Science tells us, "This is exactly how wrong I am." Science takes your pet theory, that really elegant one that you WANT to believe is Truth, and tells you, no, there's no strong correlation. That is the morality of science. When you do an experiment, and determine that your hypothesis is unsupported, you pick a different hypothesis, not a different experiment.
Yes, sometimes scientists seem like they are stumbling about in the dark. They might pick the wrong conclusion. But science is based around revisiting prior assumptions and refining them as you gather more data. What religion has such a mechanism built in? What religion describes how to amend its holy books in the event that they are demonstrated incorrect?
You're right that science takes away beliefs. But it can only harm false beliefs. How could you use science to demonstrate something incorrect? That is the strength of explaining everything from the ground up. There is a strong foundation, not based on strength of faith, but rather on a series of repeatable experiments. If you take issue with how an experiment was done, do it yourself. If you get different results, publish them. The scientific community thrives on that. If you get the same results, know that the truth of the matter has nothing to do with how willing you are to stomach it.
The one thing I will grant you is that the media does a very poor job of representing the scientific process. These scientists did not prove that there is no heaven; they did not set out to, and their experiment is not set up in a way to demonstrate that fact one way or another. What they can demonstrate is that a chemical released by the brain under extreme duress can produce strong hallucinations accompanied by a feeling of the numinous. That's not terribly exciting in and of itself, so the press fancies it up, makes the bold claims that science cannot, and releases it in comprehensible chunks to the public.They have a difficult job, trying to represent incredibly technical work to a public without the background to understand it, and often having to make it entertaining as well. Much is lost in the translation.
This research is probably accurate in explaining near death experiences, however I think that's as far as it goes. If you study religions, the concept of an afterlife varies quite a bit. In non of them is the "white light that is God" mentioned (to my knowledge). If you look at these near death experiences; all the cases appear in relation to where modern medicine has literally brought the person "back from the brink" (that is to say that they were very near to death indeed by modern standards) Certainly, they were not conscious during the experience. How then could primitive man regale his story when it would have lead to actual death while unconscious? More damning to the idea, though, is simply that these depictions are not represented in any of the religions.
I mean, if life is hard here because God gave us Free Will, but Heaven is Perfect with no pain. Doesn't that mean there's no free will there? And wouldn't that be way worse than life here? Are you really YOU without the ability to make your own choices?
I think there are a few people who would be comforted to know that they would no longer be capable of bad decisions. To view it another way; everyone finally knows _why_ all the bad decisions are bad, and thus do not choose them.
If he lets us keep our freewill, and only lets people in who won't make things bad, than wouldn't that mean a pleasant personality trumps true acts of good? Would you rather have an asshole cop who saves lives every day, or a guy who makes witty comments and makes everyone laugh?
Acts of good are just that; actions; singular events. If Heaven is eternal, I'd rather have a mousy guy who makes everyone laugh than an asshole who saves lives. To be eternally annoyed by an asshole sounds like hell. Oh, and saving lives isn't much use somewhere where everyone's dead (or living forever).
Science and morality are not related. Neither are religion and morality, although those with a vested interest in religion try to make it appear so.
Well , i am skeptical towards this "proof" .
It just proves that there is a chemical reactions when you die , which explains the tunnels of light you see when you have a near death experience.
In other words , it explains that this experience itself, is not really heaven , but just a physical reaction . It doesn't say anything about heaven itself.
Slipping shoelaces ?
Science isnt about "explaining" things, it is about trying to understand things. Theres a difference.
If NDE's can be explained by chemical reactions, that means there's no evidence for heaven right? And even if we assume heaven exists, there is no longer any reason to believe we actually go there when we die (since obviously you can't be experiencing a NDE and be in heaven at the same time, since the NDE is all in you brains).
Surely this research says something about heaven: it tells us that an NDE is not part of heaven (when previously some people believed it was).
Alcohol is a drug, and after mildly ODing on it I've been known to have long conversations with him via the big white telephone.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
> Looking at science, if science was good to humans, ms windows wasn't such a pain to use...
You're free not to use a computer, or to use another operating system.
> We are living in a culture, were we can't live without science, yes you are right, but if you look where it is heading. At the moment it isn't heading in the nice star trek direction... It is more heading in direction of big calamities, terrorism (without science no boms), diseases, war....
Without science no medicine either. Science can cure diseases, and sometimes completely eradicate them (currently only smallpox, but I'm sure we can do it again). Sure, the virus is still held in a few labs somewhere, but it hasn't killed anyone in decades.
> Why wouldn't I have been born without science ??? People have been born for thousands of years without science... Science says we come from apes ? There is even proof we have been walking strait up for millions of years, and still science says we come from apes.
It's quite likely that without science many of your ancestors would have died long before they were old enough to reproduce, but I admit GP made a lousy argument (unless your mother required a C-secion I guess). I don't know about your walking straight example, but the specifics are not really relevant: whenever science discovers it is wrong is becomes MORE accurate, not less.
> so you say science killed Christ, I rather lived without science then...
You claim not to be a christian, so honestly what do you care about some guy who supposedly died 2000 years ago? Besides, it wasn't science that killed him, just people. If the cross hadn't been invented yet, they'd just have beat him to death with a rock. Science merely enabled the particular way they killed him.
> And yes I am using a computer, and use it for work... If there wasn't one, we would live different, doing other stuff. You can't jump from one situation in the other, people are not used to it...
But you ARE free to do other stuff. Go live naked in the woods! You CHOOSE to use the fruits of the very science that you claim to dislike. There is a word for that: hypocrisy.
> The same when you grow up in a big town, you probably don't want to live some where without people, and the same way around.
So what are you trying to say? You don't like science but don't want to live without it? Or that we like science but only because we grew up with it?
> This is a discussion were we can go on for ages, you believe your stuff, I believe mine.
Yes, if only this were science, so we could use objective data to come to a conclusion.
> I just think science makes our lives more complex and slowly destroys our surroundings... Because money is involved, and moral isn't looked at...
Ah! So it's greed, not science, that you oppose?
As the religionists will correctly point out any minute now, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The experience of heaven in an NDE can be accounted for by chemical actions in the brain? Well, so can hunger -- does that mean that food doesn't exist, or that we don't need to eat? Only a few on the fringes seriously took NDEs as evidence for heaven, because the possibility of hallucinations was too obvious. So, although this is interesting, don't expect it to have any effect on the views of religionists, because it's actually irrelevant to their beliefs.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Same way you'd explain that you can call someone a Christian when the vast majority by far don't follow the bible and most of their ideals are the exact opposite of Jesus' ideals.
It disproves some fundamentalist interpretations of NDEs, yes, but most people who these days have the strong fundamentalist views are as unlikely to accept this proof as they are to accept evolution.
For people who hold philosophy-of-mind views other than the strict dualism of traditional religions, though, it's not as clear what this shows. It shows that something physical happens in the brain when people have near-death experiences, but that in itself isn't too surprising, because something happens in the brain anytime people have any experience: all experiences, sensations, thoughts, plans, feelings, etc., are enacted through some combination of chemical/neuronal/etc. signalling. So it's not actually particularly interesting, philosophically, that someone found a particular one, since we already assume one exists for all sensations, thoughts, and feelings. What exactly that means is trickier. If you were to argue that this means NDEs are "merely physical" and don't correspond to any higher-level concepts at all, would you commit to saying that of all human experiences? It's not impossible, but I find most people balk at it: at most, they'll accept that some mental illnesses are "just brain chemicals" (e.g. "the depression is a chemical imbalance talking, not really you"), but they won't go so far as to admit that the fact that they love their mother, or enjoy steak, is "just brain chemicals" in the same way.
(I personally don't hold to the fully reductionist view; it's not clear to me that even a complete map of neuronal pathways actually resolves all philosophical questions, or renders higher-level concepts obsolete.)
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If you ever have to say hush to a legitimate question, it isn't science. You seem to think science is like religion.
In practice, "science" often is like a religion. It serves many functions of religion for some people, it can fiercly oppose ideas that don't fit with the official line, and it's liable to messianic pretensions ("science will answer everything"). Read Mary Midgley's "Evolution as Religion".
Of course, scientists will rightly say that "science" doesn't do any of that, science is an objective set of methods, that all those things are an abuse of science. But then, religionists will say that all the evils of religion are not really religion but are an abuse of it, and we wouldn't let them get away with it, would we?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
The problem with science is that they are missing the moral factor, allowing them to do everything that only hurts us, or destroys our world. They are of course doing some good things too, but the question is if those good things outreach the bad things. Looking at our earth, I would say no.
Science shouldn't have morals. Morals are nothing more than someone's opinion on how things should be. Most people do agree on the same morals.
Take for instance the age of consent. It can range anywhere from 9 to 20. Who is right? 9 seems disgusting to me but then people who believe it should be 20 may thing 16 is disgusting.
Is stem research morally wrong? Some think so but would it be morally right to stop something that may save millions of lives? Again some say yes and some say no.
It's pretty sad though that most people need some greater force to tell them to treat people as they want others to treat them. Perhaps humans aren't as advanced as we would like to think.
> As the religionists will correctly point out any minute now, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Yes... and by that logic every lightning strike that we don't measure may have been magical and thrown by Thor, and it's just that sometimes lightning is caused by electricity and those are the only ones we've measured.
If all 'measured' NDEs appear to have been caused by ketamine (of course we can never PROVE *any* causal relationship...) the religionists can point out all they want that the unmeasured ones may have really been caused by heaven, but they'll just look silly. They're free to pump some people full of chemicals that instantly break down ketamine and then almost kill those people (that'd be an interesting if somewhat immoral experiment) and see if any NDE's occured.
> Well, so can hunger -- does that mean that food doesn't exist, or that we don't need to eat?
Well, I believe there is a lot of evidence that suggests not eating causes those chemical reactions, and no evidence that it is caused by some supernatural afterlife. Obviously we could use chemicals to make someone hungry even if they eat enough... but I fail to see how that proves food doesn't exist.
Well your first mistake is the term "materialistic western science". There is no other "science". Science is development of knowledge based on empirical evidence. Everything else is religion, fantasy or just plain bullshit.
Science starts with nothing and develops theories around observations.
So as long as nobody can define what "spiritual experiences" actually are and how they differ from the common hallucinations and fantasies of the human mind they don't really exist as a valid phenomenon.
Most important to any psychedelic trip are set and setting. If you lead a mostly positive life and don't carry emotional baggage, your psychedelic trips should be mostly beautiful and non-threatening. If you have a lot of negative baggage built up or are in an unfamiliar or potentially threatening setting, you are more likely to have a bad trip.
As an experienced ket tripper, I've been in a lot of mindsets going into a trip. I've had beautiful experiences that have changed me for the better, and I've had some trips to hell that have been ugly and scary. The connections to archetypes are always pretty pronounced on this drug. I've never had that happen consistently on other psychedelics like mushies.
I think the researchers should look specifically at 5-MeO-DMT, since that is actually produced by the body and is a potent psychedelic. I believe it has a direct connection to these NDEs.
If all 'measured' NDEs appear to have been caused by ketamine (of course we can never PROVE *any* causal relationship...) the religionists can point out all they want that the unmeasured ones may have really been caused by heaven, but they'll just look silly.
No you're missing the point. The religionists don't have to argue any such dualism. They just have to argue that the encounter with heaven produces ketamine, and it's the ketamine that produces the qualia, the experience. They can argue that the experience can be artificially induced by introducing ketamine, but that says nothing about the supposed "natural" phenomenon.
Absolutely every experience we have come down to chemical actions in the brain. The fact that we happen to know what that chemical action is says nothing at all about the validity of the experience, and it's bad science -- going beyond the observations -- to pretend that it does. The interesting debate here is not about religion at all, it's about the nature of consciousness itself.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
- Even if it did make any sort of sense, it's extremely disrespectful and, frankly, anti-scientific to call someone a moron based on their beliefs. You can't be a scientist without an open mind. You can't have an honest discussion without basic respect. In defending Science, please attack the argument and not the person.
I'm inclined to disagree. You can't call someone a moron for not having all the facts, but when someone willfully ignores the entire concept of fact.. Well, political correctness and politeness be damned, "moron" is far to mild a word.
I am an atheist ... a timeless eternity "somewhere else", but there was no bright light and all that, it was a dark and nasty place.
Well, no wonder you went to hell, eh? ;)
One that hath name thou can not otter
In other words , it explains that this experience itself, is not really heaven , but just a physical reaction . It doesn't say anything about heaven itself.
And seeing as no one has demonstrably "come back" from heaven, only from possibly an overdose to endorphins and suchlike, it's still a hell of a lot more scientific than all this "you must have faith" crap we've been subjected to for the past 2000 years.
There is still not one iota of proof for or against a god or a heaven, anymore than there is proof that Underpants Gnomes really exist ... the difference being, if I said I believe in the Underpants Gnomes, I'd get locked up in a mental asylum, but if I believe in God that's okay.
Taking away our believes, in a better life afterwards, makes people lose hope for this live, losing the moral, making humankind do all kind of bad things, making live for themselves or for others unlivable.
No it doesn't. Secular groups like Humanists believe in making the world better for the sake of future generations. Humanists don't believe in holy wars, or prostrating yourself before some figurehead who claims to speak for some magical cloud people. They believe in the progress and sustainability of the human species.
That's more than I can say for mainstream religions.
~X~
~X~
Regardless of one's views on supernatural experiences, religion, or life after death, the arguments presented in the linked article must be rejected, because they are illogical, and very embarrasingly so for their authors, and also for their publishers.
In essence, they argue from the premise that the mere fact that a perception of having an experience can be triggered by an artificial stimulus to the brain, implies that the experience itself is never caused by anything in objective reality, and is entirely a product of subjective internal biochemical processes. But that conclusion doesn't follow logically, at all.
For example, we know that visual hallucinations can be triggered by artificial stimuli, but from that observation, it does not follow that light does not exist, and that those of us who claim to see things, such as this text on the screen, must be imagining it.
We also know from experiments conducted by electrically stimulating the brains of patients undergoing brain surgery, that vivid memories of childhood experiences can be evoked, having such clarity and vividness that they seem to the patient as if they were happening right then and there on the operating table, at the time of the experiment. But from these observations it does not follow that those experiences never really took place at all, or that the persons claiming to have had those childhood experiences were merely hallucinating when they were four years old, and thought that they were playing with their father.
"Same way you'd explain that you can call someone a Christian when the vast majority by far don't follow the bible and most of their ideals are the exact opposite of Jesus' ideals"
Indeed. This is precisely why I don't believe in Christians. I've never met one. I've met plenty of people who claim to be Christians but since they all selectively believe bits of the bible and not other parts I just don't see how they can claim to be Christian. It reminds me of someone I studied Geology with. She was a 'Young Earther' who didn't believe the world was more than 6000 years old but she was studying a field which explicitly disagrees with her. In the end she got a degree in Geology despite her disagreement with its basic ideas and thus I don't consider her a geologist.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
The whole "Christian" right is proof. I don't completely deny the idea of an after-life. It is pretty much a 50-50 chance. Either it is there or it isn't. What I am very certain of is that humans don't have a clue at all what will happen after they die. After all that is whole point in having faith. You don't have faith that the first letter of the English alphabet is A. It's a fact which can't be sensibly denied by anyone. That can't be said about any religion beliefs which is why the Christian god puts so much value in people having faith because you can't prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he exists.
How I got to that conclusion to was by reading up on religions and reading the texts like the bible. The bible is actually quite interesting and there are some very good ideas in it. But most practitioners of their religion pick and choose bits or want to stick in their head in the sand about the fact the Jewish, Christian and Muslim religions are so similar and all three borrow bits from previous religions. Where as the wise thing would be to say there reason for all the similarities are that the fundamentals are true and they've just come out differently due to human interpretation and therefore embrace the other religions rather than act as if they are your worst enemy.
It's not that hard to see that America's "Christian" right and their beliefs do not match Jesus' teachings and beliefs. For starters the bible is quite clear that you shouldn't be a loud mouth religious jerk and that your connection to the lord should be private.
There is also the fact that the free market capitalist system ironically matches the evolutionary theory and not Christianity. It's all about survival of the fittest. Not wanting to share some of your wealth so others can have healthcare falls under greed which is a sin and the bible repeatedly blasts the rich and wealthy. After all it's apparently easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven and the bible states you can't serve two masters, the lord and mammon (money).
So therefore the whole basis of being a Christian conservative is complete and utter BS.
I'd go out of my way to help out someone who truly followed the word of Christ. I think for someone to sit down and actually read the bible and do their best to follow it to the letter is very admirable. By that I mean the important bits about helping your fellow man and not being a greedy douche. But there in lies the problem, I've not really met anyone like that and I've certainly not seen them on TV.
It's easy for people to say that Muslims need to tackle their extremists (which they should) but Christians have the same exact problem and they need to start standing up and condemning those who don't follow the bible properly rather than paying Sarah Palin to read a speech off her hand.