Even in the midst of a crisis, Americans can come together and find spiritual comfort buying a line of bullshit from a nice man who sincerely believes his bullshit to be true. That’s apparently why Fox & Friends had neurosurgeon Eben Alexander on their program yesterday, where he described his own “experiences” of Heaven while in a coma caused by meningitis. Alexander, who happens to be hawking a best-selling book confidently titled Proof of Heaven, had the “hopeful” message that the murdered children’s families “can know that those precious souls are cherished and cared for right now.” Comfort is a good product to be peddling at a time like this, and there’s a succor born every minute.
After Alexander confidently asserted that the murdered children would have experienced “being welcomed into comfort and love beyond our human understanding,” Gretchen Carlson blithely reminded viewers that Alexander had “left this Earth for a week” and gone to heaven, then asked, beginning to cry, ”Will these children forget, when they’re in heaven, what happened to them?”
Alexander replied, “They will know what happened, but they will not feel the pain. They will feel the love and cherishing of being back there. And they will know that they changed this world.”
Just to make sure that Alexander could be detested both by skeptics and by theists, Brian Kilmeade then asked him “Where is the shooter?” While the obvious answer is Hell, Alexander suggested that the killer is now undergoing something like a lengthy afterlife IRS audit, like in that one Albert Brooks movie, only without Meryl Streep:
“The shooter is in a place of reviewing his own life…it’s what’s called a life review in the whole near-death literature; it’s a very real phenomenon of reliving all the events of one’s life and reliving the pain and suffering that we’ve handed out to others, but from their point of view. And in that realm that pain is felt much more intensely by the perpetrator than it was ever felt by victims here on Earth.”
So sort of like Hell, but also like a combination of sensitivity training and forced empathy, so that the shooter will know what he did and feel bad about it. Dr. Alexander did not explain how he came by this knowledge during his week in the afterlife, as he presumably has not killed anyone.
We actually are torn between empathy for Ms. Carlson, who is obviously horrified at the possibility that children in Heaven might remember their final agonies, and disgust that she so unquestioningly accepted that there is any validity to this guy’s supposed “expertise.” We’ll go with disgusted empathy for Carlson, and just plain disgust for Dr. Alexander, who, as a neurosurgeon, really should know better.
As famous-guy neurologist Oliver Sacks pointed out in the Atlantic last week, Alexander’s “near death experience” is pretty much a classic hallucination of the sort that many patients experience coming out of a coma. Instead of putting his scientific training to use and using his hallucination as a jumping-off-point to advance public understanding of the brain, Alexander is trading off of his credibility as a neurosurgeon and cashing in on some comforting bullshit, simply because his hallucinations felt so very real to him. As Sacks (who is, OK, also selling a book, but it’s a real book) says, Alexander’s claim is “more than unscientific — it is antiscientific. It precludes the scientific investigation of such states.”
The whole sorry episode can be viewed below; depending on the dynamics of your family, you may want to brace yourselves for a wave of emails calling it either inspirational or heretical. So far, at least, we have been spared any proclamations that dead six-year-olds are now in Hell for not accepting Jesus. Then again, it’s only been five days.
[Mediaite via alert Wonketteer Chascates / Atlantic / Salon]
Check out Wonkette on Facebook and Twitter and even on Tumblr. And if your idea of a near-death experience is reading The Blaze, Doktor Zoom is on Twitter, also, too.
{ 237 comments }
I thought heaven was a place where nothing ever happened…
It does sound incredibly dull if you listen to the Bible Thumpers doesn't it?
It sounds like a friggin yearly performance review.
Without all the sweaty pits.
You will hear your favorite songs though.
I thought heaven is a place on earth…
Only if you are a GoGo… or Belinda Carlisle, specifically
Keep in mind, she was a coke head.
Things go better with coke?
Where love comes first…
It's also a place that is dead on a Saturday night.
But there's this Jewish guy from Minnesota who's continually knocking on the fucking door.
At least he threw his guns to the ground when he couldn't use them anymore.
We'll, he's gotta serve somebody.
Qu'est-ce que c'est
In Heaven. . . everything is fine. You've got yours, and you've got mine.
Posted this in other thread, but copied here
Fuckin A. And sad story time…
Back in middle school, I had a friend, she was my best friend. Like me she came from a family that was always on the edge, though moreso than mine (my dad, for all his faults, is a fucking work horse and had a union job, her dad wanted to be an actor and her mother worked retail jobs) eventually I outgrew her, she never escaped the townie culture while I went to college and became a professional.
A couple of years ago, I had learned that she had been found dead in a building in Boston.
I connected wtih her mother on facebook, mostly because I wanted to keep on tabs about the funeral arrangements. I never found out.
Her mother had apparently been "Born again" (though my sister claims she was before I knew them too) and amid all the usual pro life crap, she was going on about how her daughter was "with the lord", and reading that made me angry.
Her daughter was dead, likely of a drug overdose. She was never encouraged to make something better of herself. She was never helped with school work, she was never supported intellectually or even emotionally. I'm always hearing of "bad choices" and her life was a series of bad choices, but they were often the only ones she had. She was forever to be a statistic, one of "those people" who made bad decisions and who was never going to be anything more than another dead girl from a poor background.
And she was going on about Jesus. I wanted to rail at her. If she had been a better mother, if she had left her worthless husband, taken charge of her childrens' lives, pushed them to be something more than the class they were born into maybe she would still be alive.
Instead she was praising Jesus.
Fuck that shit.
I hadn't been Christian for a long time, but the way people talk about God calling home Angels to be in his loving embrace pisses me off. Its a cheap comfort. These children and their teachers died in terror. They were taken out before they had a chance to really live. They're not "sitting on Jesus' lap" they're fucking dead.
And like my friend's mother, these fucknuts at Faux news are partially responsible. They've pushed the Republican agenda, they cultivated the gun rage of the tea party, they've fed us bullshit about "freedom", they feed the victim mentality of the fascist pseudo Christian mother fuckers who cling to their guns as something God gave them himself and they have the gall to try to comfort themselves with images of little children with wings.
Fuck you Gretchen. You get no comfort, you should feel fucking guilty as shit.
It's the cheap theology that gives us something like 70% of Americans think angels personally intervene in their lives. I think it's insulting the way they say these poor kids are all angels in heaven. There were probably Jewish & Muslim & even atheist kids who were victims – yet somehow all theology gets thrown out and they're all in heaven? If these religious nuts were honest they would have to admit that by "their rules" some of these victims are not in heaven. But that wouldn't play for dumb America so Faux News has to give us the Hallmark Afternoon Special version that acts like evangelical Christianity is "nice"….
That may be so, but I'm still pretty sure my god can kick your god's ass.
It was great when Baal and Yahweh used to duke it out, and then bring in Yam for a three-way.
The make up sex was awesome!
God runs away from every challenge. With a twitch of his nose, he could take care of AIDS, hunger, war, tsumanis, bigotry, DWTS. But nothing. He sits back and rigidly obeys the laws of physics and probability.
Then gets pissed off at gay people –
1000% agree. Sorry for your friend; specifically for having such shitty parents.
If you want to know how much God cares about children, read the Old Testament. God is/was a cold hearted mother fucker. He would kill or have killed men, women, children even infants at the drop of a hat. These God/Jesus freaks never mention that part of "God's will".
Oh, they mention it, all right. "God called (insert name here) because he needed another angel." Or some other bullshit like that.
That line makes me want to puke – plain and simple.
Thanks for sharing the story. I agree completely about the socio-political abuse of religion. If a story gives someone comfort, then so be it. But don't try to peddle the lunacy wholesale.
Recently a co-worker told me how she was following a busload of seniors evacuating Houston before Hurricane Rita. She pulled off the highway to get gas and later learned that the bus had caught fire and 24 elderly people died. She actually had the cojones to say, "I guess the Lord was watching over me that day!' It took all the self control I had not to say, "Yeah, and those olds must have really pissed him off!"
I generally like this girl, but honestly! How can you fail to see the irony here?
Ugh this.
I'm sick of religion being the "reason" for every ill willed thing happening in this country
Lizzie:
Thanks for your commentary, which closely mirrors my anger. This anger is only 48 hours old, and has now replaced the utter grief I experienced these past few days. And my greyhound is more intelligent than Carlson.
Peace.
uh huh….what's he smokin' and where's mine????
He's high on Jesus.
Not even jebus, from what I've read about him. He's high on "spirituality," which has all the denial of reality but more happy feefees.
Oh, and I imagine the royalty checks, speaking fees, and adulation help, too.
A girl I went to grade school with had a similar experience; she was in an auto wreck and subsequent coma, and when she awoke and came back to school she kept telling everyone that she had gone to heaven and wouldn't shut up about how amazing it was. Whatever it was she experienced was so powerful that she kept trying to kill herself to get back there. Fortunately she was only 9 and she wasn't very good at it. I lost track of her after her parents opted for permanent institutionalisation.
Of course, we know now that people in comas have very confused neurons and that pleasure centres are hyperstimulated as well. So yeah, what is he smoking?
I had reconstructive surgery on a shoulder once, and I awoke in the recovery room to one of the happiest feelings I have ever experienced.
Trembling, I fell to my knees and thanked high quality narcotics.
Thy demerol and dilaudid, they comfort me…
A lot of MDs pee on science after they get their license.
And don't forget Deepockets Chopra…
Bullshit dude writes bullshit book about bullshit heaven.
At least the dude and the book actually exist.
Hallucinations don't sell books.
Worked for Robert Howard.
see also L Ron Hubbard, the book of Revelations, anything by Timothy Leary and Life, the autobiography of Keith Richards
And good old Elron and LaHaye.
You forgot Joseph Smith.
Joe Smith didn't hallucinate so much as continue in the make-shit-up and then peddle-the-bullshit-to-rubes business that he had been cultivating his entire professional life.
What about William Burroughs.
Good point. I read Lunch in 9th grade, and have never been the same.
Looks like it is (and has) to me.
Alexander Shulgin disagrees.
And let's not forget Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Victor Bugliosi libel!
Oliver Sacks' new book is, of course, all about the neuroscience of hallucinations (buy it from the Powells link in the article and support Yr. Wonkette!)
“They will know what happened, but they will not feel the pain. …"
Is this math he does as a Republican to make himself feel better about gun violence?
Oh fuck you man, taking my entire rant and putting it into a succinct package that says everything that needs to be said and manages to be snarky at the same time.
I salute you you bastard.
I actually thought your rant was fantastic.
Flattery will get you everywhere.
I applaud your rant, too.
Pretty much.
How do you know he's a Republican?
He was a guest on Fox News and wasn't run out of the building.
Good point — he's a nonpartisan, nondenominational feelgood-bullshit peddler. Since his version of heaven is so utterly vague, he can talk about it almost anywhere and a lot of people will go "Ohh, so nice."
See the comments on FoxNews or The Blaze — the fundies who point out that he's not invoking enough hellfire, and who'd get support if the topic were, say, gay marriage, are actually outnumbered by the people who want to believe in a cuddly everyone-gets-a-CareBear afterlife. Saccharine sells.
I guess we are all entitled to our own monetarily motivated theories on such. My hell is right there on that couch between Gretch, the Dooce with Kilmeade on the side, unless I get to bring a swinging implement that is also on fire.
Swinging, burning votes?
unless I get to bring a swinging implement that is also on fire.
Is it wrong that that image makes me happy?
If it's a flaming marshmallow on a stick, Doocy and Kilmeade will try to grab it with their bare hands.
…and THAT's why you just get the babies to bum rush the shooter. Build a dead baby barricade for Jesus?
sick sick sick
Given that Gretchen Carlson graduated cum laude from Stanford I have to believe that her abject stupidity is some sort of Andy Kaufman-esque piece of performance art.
Either that or she's suffering from lead poisoning after six years of breathing in Brian Kilmeade's Drakkar Noir
Psst! Top schools like Harvard & Stanford admit applicants who are dumb as a box of rocks, for various reasons.
I knew a Native American who graduated from Standford- works part time in Construction, thinks anyone who doesn't believe in God is "wrong". Dumb, dumd, dumb…
Southern Peru, '74, before the rains…
Or maybe Stanford ain't all its cracked up to be.
Hmmm. Where did Condi Rice teach?
Now, that completely bums me out that she went to Stanford and remains that stupid.
Or she had a VERY obscure and easy major.
Shhh. Getting a little close to home there…
Spill.
Journamalism?
I'm guessing Communications or 20th Century Media.
Reminds me of one of my favorite, possibly apocryphal, stories about Joe Namath. Supposedly he was being interviewed at an Alabama press conference and a sports reporter sneeringly asked, "Is it true you're majoring in basket-weaving?" Joe replied, "No, I major in journalism."
Or it could be straight-up exploitation, like the Coulter excrescence.
I wouldn't dignify it with "performance art" and it's certainly not Kaufman-esque, it's more old fashioned role playing and selling it to her audience, who for the most part are not in on the joke.
Well-said.
Whatever they want her to do, she'll do. That keeps the paychecks coming.
Her behavior doesn't rise anywhere near the level of any form of "art".
She broke character with that "Republican-math" thing. I wonder if they docked her paycheck that week.
I think that was Megyn Kelly.
Right. They pay her to be stupid.
Well, you know who ELSE graduated from Stanford?
Being a robotic grind who gets straight A's and hyperachieves has, in my experience, less than nothing to do with just straight up native intelligence. Smartest people I know are all too smart to take that shit seriously.
i've forgotten, is she the fox blond or the fox blond?
Antiscientific? BOOK HIM NOW?
-Fox News Producer-
Where is Bork?
Not being mourned as a Supreme Court Justice? (Thank Allah).
Slouching towards Rentboy?
I read that as "Where is Bjork" and you wouldn't believe how much more sense that made.
I thought they were all assimilated.
In the Swedish chef's vocabulary?
"I see dumb people."
Takes me back to good ol' days with John-Roger and the Life's Little Instruction cottage industry.
What about the "Chicken Soup" series? My favorite was Chicken Vindaloo for the Hindu Soul.
Only because of your comment's alliterative allure,
allow me to remind y'all what John-Roger's co-author of those books titled his retaliative tale: "What To Do When Your Guru Sues You" ~
Fux and it's minions can and will go to hell.
makes me sad that i don't believe in that bullshit….and they clearly don't either or they wouldn't be doing what they're doing.
When will Santa Claus step up and comfort The Widows, like W did?
Five days? W was still holed up in an undisclosed coke den.
I already heard a (far too lengthy) interview with this guy on NPR.
National Poltergeist Radio?
there’s a succor born every minute.
Well done!
That's 'Welk done'.
Poops!
Would be even droller if it were "borne."
Kid Zoom made my day when he read that and declared it a Pratchett-quality pun. And god knows the poor lad has had enough puns inflicted on him that he knows the difference.
Pass the sherry! Despite appearances, wonkette has become highly literate.
I had a clear vision last night as I slept of Diana Rigg in a leather cat suit inviting me to her loft for drinks. I regretfully don’t believe this vision is proof positive that I will have an eventful evening.
Ummmm. Diana Rigg.
Exactly. I got my first view of The Avengers at just the right age. Diana Rigg in leather will always be a special (and well-rehearsed) memory.
Just when you thought the Grief Porn couldn't get anymore offensive or disgusting, we have people speculating on the afterlife of murdered children.
Can not wait for Friday.
Grief Porn
Thank you! I was looking for a phrase to describe how people try to tap into the current big thing and become a part of something. A friend of mine describes herself as a "natural empath" and can feel the grief and fear of the victims from a thousand miles away.
But empaths are useless, "I feel anger, Captain". You feel anger from the Cardassian ranting about how he's about to blow up the Enterprise? No shit! Fuck Troi sucks. And what's the ship's shrink even doing as a bridge officer, anyway?
I'm surprised that with Ens. Wesley Crusher sitting nearby she felt anything but hot seething teenage lust.
Of course, had Worf been an empath he might have felt the same thing. Not that there's anything wrong with that…
And what was up with the bunny suit?
She completed the command-level training. (Not that they gave her very many opportunities to use it…)
I thought it was a useful skill, if only to depressurize the other commanders. You know that Roddenberry fought to keep a chaplain off the ship.
You do know that Friday is when the NRA is going to hold what can't possibly be anything other than the most offensive press conference you'll ever hear, right? Get me to Saturday, por favor.
Hopefully the Mayan Apocalypse will strike prior to that.
I'm pro-rapture so long as they take all these assholes out of here on Friday and leave us to fix their fucking mess.
If this assholes' hallucinations are Proof of Heaven, then the scary dream I had the other night was Proof of Dragons.
And mine was proof of three-boobed space vixens who have incredibly versatile tongues.
I'm plugging a book called "Proof Anne Hathaway and My Wife are Sister-Wives to Me"
I had a dream I was the Queen of England the other night. It must be so!
"it’s what’s called a life review"
Ahhh, fuck no. I have to do what are call reviews now and they suck. A supervisor and I listen to calls I took and we critique them. I hate listening to them. Why can't the supervisor just shoot me an email highlighting what worked and what didn't and let me listing to the recoding if I want to? This is going to be like call reviews, isn't it? I just know I'll say something like, "yeah yeah…wasted life, broken dreams, lies to myself and others…can we just wrap this up?" And God, or whatever Angel Bureaucrat he assigns to me will get all pissed off and send me to hell.
In short, if the afterlife is going to be like a corporate performance review I'm going to call in dead that day.
I get an annual review at work. It's probably the same thing. "What are your goals for next year?" "Do you need any additional training of resources to be more effective?" "Here are some areas that need improvement?"
See also Kilgore Trout, "Asleep at the Switch."
That reminds me, I have to do my annual self report.
Gee it sure is funny how the details of the experience that this guy describes in Proof of Heaven doesn't actually bear anything more than a very, very vague resemblance to the details of the experience described by that Heaven is Real that kid
's dad ghostwrote.So either this "near-death" thing is an intensely personalized -perhaps even psychological- experience, OR, they went to different heavens? And consequentially, there must be different versions of God? Which means Christianity is full of shit anyway, since it says there's only one?
Dr. Alexander did not explain how he came by this knowledge during his week in the afterlife, as he presumably has not killed anyone.
It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
[Carlson] " then asked, beginning to cry"
Fuck this noise.
You know, there is a special hell reserved for douchebags like John Edward this who profit by taking advantage of gullible grieving peoples' desire for false comfort; or rather, there would be if there was a hell, which there isn't, because there is no afterlife, death is it. Asshole.
If there isn't a hell, FOX would have to invent it.
Welcome to Fox News, where we gently confirm your superstitions and strongly discount science for the continual benefit of the wealthy oil and weapons conglomerates.
The Benghazi Report is out, so I doubt Fox will be talking about Sandy Hook anymore.
It pretty much says that State had some serious security lapsess. Nothing else. No cover up, no lack of military intervention, nada.
Well, no shit!
I hear it basically says that Hillary did Benghazi, so they'll have fun with that, for awhile, though nowhere near as much fun as they were having.
Arpropos of very little, this got "Tears in Heaven" running around my head on a loop.
You're better off than me then; I got Styx's "Show Me the Way" ("Every night I say a prayer in the hopes that there's a heaven").
lucky bastards. I have "I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas," so count your blessings, the both of you.
They can't say dead 6 years olds are in hell for failing to accept Jesus because it undercuts their concept of "innocent life" which they need to continue their anti-abortion rants. So you can kiss your original sin goodbye
Just as soon as some asshole tells a kid about jeebus, sin, heaven, etc, then it's the kid's free agency that decides whether the kid goes to imaginary heaven or imaginary hell. It's pretty simple, really.
At least one of the kids was Jewish, so I'm surprised Phelps or Fischer hasn't publicly damned his soul.
And Jack Chick would condemn the Catholic kids for eating Death Cookies.
I thought those doble-stuffed, Oreos were the death coolies?
Naw, you got it backwards. See, the worst thing about abortion is that none of the babies are baptized, so when you abort them you're damning them to hell.
Just remember, Ron Paul is a doctor too. I wonder what Libertarian heaven is like? Lower taxes?
Gunz galore!
And how many of the little angels can dance on the head of a pin?
All of them, Kali.
Foxtards do this same thing every time anything at all happens, intentionally trying to ArchieBunkerize the nation. The thing I don't get is: why aren't they all swinging from lampposts yet? If this were any other country, they would be.
Do not want this guy on MY death panel, no way…
I thought a neurosurgeon was supposed to fix brain disorders, not be a carrier of them.
For me, heaven would be a perpetual state of Gretchen Carlson consciousness. Then again, I've always said if it turns out the Hindoos are right, I want to come back as a sponge.
Look at us, such superiority and derision from the same crowd that made Tears In Heaven a hit.
But then again, Eric Clapton is God.
You never cease to amaze, with your perfect knowledge of the entire gestalt of the generation prior to your own. How the fuck did this come to be?
Self evident. She listened to Crossroads on Wheels of Fire.
There's a difference between a comforting and private belief that someone who has died has gone to a better place and mourning porn.
Especially when the one engaging in mourning porn is trying to deflect attention from his culpability in what caused the death in the first place.
Speak for yourself; I never cared for that song, probably tied with "Wonderful Tonight" for Clapton's worse. But he gets a pass considering the circumstances that lead to that song.
I've had that running through my head since Friday. I listen to it rarely because it always makes me cry.
They are all in heaven, except the Jewish kids, who will suffer eternal hellfire for not being born again. Duh.
Wait – where's Mitt when you need him?
This country will not start moving in the right direction until we as a people start to come to grips with the fact that God does not exist, and if he does, he was certainly AWOL on Friday, so fuck him.
Also, for fuck's sake!
Being an atheist dwelling among aggressively evangelical Christians, as a
Guess Hera got zapped, in mid-post. They are truly aggressive.
Thunderbolt missed. Took out a Christmas tree down the block. God needs an AR-15.
Oh hey, guess all the little angels now have fucking Bork to represent them, in their heavenly lawsuit against the guy who murdered them, constitutionally, probably. Or wait, maybe he's gonna represent the other guy? Either way, good riddance, and huzzah, bork is fucking dead too.
Yay! Fuck Him! The Saturday Night Massacre was the most shameful corrupt hackish shitbag fuckface douche thing ever done by any holder of public office, ever, and literally, Bork was the very fucking bottom of Nixon's barrel.
And it looks like he
builtdid it himself, over 30 years late, but oh well, he's dead now, a Festivus miracle.A guy walks to a newstand picks up a copy of the daily newspaper. Looks at the front page. Puts it down. Sighs. Pays the kid for the paper and leaves it on the stack. He does this again the next day. And the next. And the next. For weeks. Finally, one morning the kid asks him, "hey, Mister, every day you come here and pick up a paper. You don't open it. You put it down. Pay for it and leave it. Why are you doing that?"
The guy responds, "well, son. I'm checking to see if a man died."
The kid says, "okay. but you never get to the obituaries."
The guy says, "Yeah. That's because when the sonuvabitch I'm looking for dies, it's going to be on the front page."
Someone said it above, but this is just plain, explotiative grief porn. Everyone should be offended by this regardless of one's belief or lack there of.
Seven Murderous Psychopaths You'll Meet in Heaven
Mitch Albom libel!
And that's fine by me.
Tuesdays with Gretchen
Ugh. A book about how a dude who murdered a 6-year-old should be absolved. Nope, not forgiven.
As a Christian, I can't even begin to wrap my head around the absolute asininity of this exchange, much less try to rationalize it
Except to say Carlson is about as Christian as she is Muslim.
I didn't even know chipmunks were religious!
If all the people who aren't born-again and do stuff like think for themselves are going to hell, wouldn't hell by default be a better place than heaven?
What's the line from the song? ♫ They say there's a heaven for those who will wait. Some say it's better but I say it ain't. I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints." ♪
And in this case, it was the good who died young.
Go to heaven for the climate, go to hell for the company..
Journalism in the good 'ol U.S. of A. just keeps getting better and better!
Gretchen then asked how Santa makes it all to the houses of good little boys and girls in a single night.
I remember being in a grocery store shortly after the OKC bombing and seeing a big, glossy coffee table book of photographs called "Terror in the Heartland" available in the impulse-purchase section near the gum and batteries and thinking, "Yep. We're done."
I had the same reaction the first time I met a long haired redneck.
Which reminds me what someone supporting McVeigh's response was when asked about the 19 children killed in his lethal hissy fit against the gubmint: They would only have grown up to be the enemy, so better to get them young. Or words to that effect.
OT: Bork has borked.
I wonder if he still had that shitty chin spinach.
I hope he choked on that chitty sin spinach.
What a bunch of bullshit, talking about heaven as if it were some real place. It's like discussing a color that no one has ever seen. Fucking nonsense.
Needs more technobabble.
I'm so grateful I don't have a teevee! Last night I was waiting for takeout in the Ethiopian place and CNN was blaring, live from Connecticut. Douchebag Sanjay Gupta standing in front of the Lanza house speculating on whether the young killer was on anti-depressants. Some chick talking about violent video games. Two anchors in winter coats sounding sonorously unhappy. Soft focus pictures of teddy bears piled under a Christmas tree. I take it these 20 minutes of bullshit I endured are repeated endlessly day and night.
Ah, the religious right. They need the gun violence to justify their belief that God will soothe the dead – but they forget the part about their own preachings that God watches over them forever and always. When I asked my fundie Mom to explain this one, she fell back on her old standby… "some things are just not for us to understand". Here it is, a week before my whole family gathers to praise the first David Koresh, and I have to tell my mother to take her ridiculous bullshit and shove it up her ass. Now, my sister is all pissed off at me for making Mom mad and my wife is worried that I am going to make an ass out of myself on Christmas day (I probably will). Praise Jesus for dead babies to get families talking again.
Probably worth pointing out that this guy's not Christian; he's more of a damp-washcloth new-age "spirituality" kind of guy with no doctrine other than "think nice thoughts and you'll be blissed out after death, also buy my book."
Different cloak, same dagger. Until the world is no longer brainwashed that this place is just a proving point, we will continue to face the blindness and denial that we currently deal with.
"Instead of putting his scientific training to use and using his hallucination as a jumping-off-point to advance public understanding of the brain"
Grifting gullible rubes is probably a lot easier than brain surgery, plus no threat of malpractice suit.
Who'da thought it? I used to lick God off of stamp paper before going to Six Flags and riding the Shock Wave. I never "quite" saw heaven, but when the support beams would breathe, it would really freak me out.
I spent most of day in heaven once. No matter where I looked, I couldn't find the guy who sold it to me so I could get more.
And love is not a victory march,
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah…
We need more neurologists, or is he actually a urologist, to tell us more about heaven so I know what to pack.
Holy shit, the human race is doomed. 90+% have not evolved far enough to be able to understand logic and face facts, and we have had 200,000 years since we walked upright- there is little hope.
That's interesting because I keep seeing a message from God on Facebook that this happened because "he" isn't allowed in schools. So am I to assume that the same God that kills little kids because he doesn't get his morning props is also holding a party for them when they get to his door?
When it appropriately serves power-hungry conservatives, YES, that's exactly what you're supposed to believe. To them, God is made in their image: pro-life except when they're trying to starve you or blow your head off.
Must be Old Testament God – he was quite the asshole.
Yes, but with the birth of his son he got religion.
That feeling when you want to pick up a baseball bat even though you don't own a baseball shall now be referred to as "feeling Gretched."
Jesus said "my kingdom is not of this earth". Now I can see why. Anything to get away from these assholes.
I think this is my favorite comment in the whole thread!!!
Wow. I caught myself thinking, "Well, at least they're taking a break from encouraging more people to carrying around guns in more places."
We're having to dig holes to set the bar lower and lower.
My sisters would assure me that any Jewish or Muslim children at Sandy Hook are most definitely in Hell, for not accepting Jesus. And they aren't too sure about the others either, depending on the enthusiasm of their parents.
I would also point out that the learned doctor is, in fact, alive so he was never actually dead, and so could not be in Heaven. QED.
Man, my relatives are crazy, but thankfully they're not crazy Christian crazy.
God's bookkeeping skills are as poor as his geography.
With this kind of story, I think he was dead for a week before he came back to. Oxygen deprivation does that to ya.
The kids were playing with Beetlejuice and Flabber until the Ghostbusters caught them all. They were later transferred into a snow globe where they can live in Christmas forever. Hey, making stupid shit up is easy. Pay me.
Just get some 'shrooms. You can get 'em for free — they grow on cow poop.
That's what it was! I don't see any fungi on our cow poop :( I gues I'll need to attend a Phish concert again.
I am sad that I Eben read a word of this.
Gretchen will never understand that her Labia (upper and lower) are better felt than heard. The good "Doctor", however, will no doubt continue to produce shit from both upper and lower orifices so long as there are ignorant tools willing to put him in front of a camera.
St. Peter: "I don't know if we can let you in, Steve, over the course of your life you used the lord's name in vain over a million times…"
Steve: "A million times?!?! Jesus Christ!"
- Steve Martin
And when they ask God why He didn't do anything to prevent or halt their slaughter . . .
I went to an MD once to talk about axiety issues I was having due to my husband recently coming out as transgender. The physicianand told me my problem was that we had "lost our path to the lord." And gave me a referral to a therapist who specialized in sex addiction.
I got my xanax elsewhere.
My vision of Heaven was based on Gahan Wilson's: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tC2Hd2-jCnM/Th_ATqj1guI…
It's risky to base one's vision of anything on Gahan Wilson's.
Gretchen Carlson may have been a beauty pageant winner, but she was also a accomplished student who studied at Oxford and was a talented violinist. So either she is playing dumb or suffered brain damage around the time she started working for Fox News.
Obviously, you haven't met many violinists.
She positively reeks of blonde.
Needz less Shyamalan.
Alexander's book mentions nothing about jesus and, while it's fine for strict materialists to dismiss an array of – perhaps – controversial evidence rebuking their worldview, it's nothing but a cheap shot to impugn his integrity because he authored a book on the subject of the afterlife.
A neurologist hallucinates during his time in a coma, proclaims he has visited Heaven and has a book to sell? A "cheap shot to impugn his integrity?" What integrity?
Let's just say Heaven for her may have been in her bathroom after she snorted.
*I'm being mean, afaik she was clean by the time she wrote that song.
When you get cold busted sleeping with a "friend"'s ol' lady, you really gotta think on your feet. Well done, Smith…
Saying "god OK'ed it" doesn't work as well as you'd think. Maybe with a fundie spouse, but then it's missionary position all the time*.
______________________________
* once every 12 weeks
Yes, and it makes you wonder if they're not all cynics just playing the role required by the FOX News business model. They're all college-educated urbanites living in New York city. Are they all just pandering to a low-brow audience for whom they really have nothing but contempt?
If trends continue and the FOX business model someday is no longer lucrative and they all move on to other jobs, I wonder if there won't be a lot of revelatory autobiographies in which they laugh it all off and laugh at all of us for ever having taken them seriously.
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