Heaven Is for Real is the true story of the four-year old son of a small town Nebraska pastor who during emergency surgery slips from consciousness and enters heaven. He survives and begins talking about being able to look down and see the doctor operating and his dad praying in the waiting room. The family didn't know what to believe but soon the evidence was clear.
Colton said he met his miscarried sister, whom no one had told him about, and his great grandfather who died 30 years before Colton was born, then shared impossible-to-know details about each. He describes the horse that only Jesus could ride, about how "reaaally big" God and his chair are, and how the Holy Spirit "shoots down power" from heaven to help us.
Told by the father, but often in Colton's own words, the disarmingly simple message is heaven is a real place, Jesus really loves children, and be ready, there is a coming last battle.
OK so this story is kind of the child version of 90 Minutes in Heaven, another bestseller. Now I really don't believe that this kid went to Heaven, but was in a hallucinogenic state during his operation or some other scientific reason. It seems like there were not many arguments against the child's experience on Amazon reviews and it was the #1 New York Times Bestseller ; maybe because he was a child or it seems so true. So my question is what do you think of these type of stories and how do you react to them?
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Permalink Reply by Timothy Gentle on March 20, 2011 at 10:56am
Permalink Reply by Doug Reardon on March 20, 2011 at 12:46pm Bull hocky!
Permalink Reply by Becca on March 20, 2011 at 1:13pm I think these stories are lies or hallucinations due to chemicals and neuron firing that happens to people when the body thinks it dieing.
The drug ketamine can cause people to have out of body experiences. Some people have out of body experiences upon going to sleep... out of body experiences are not much of a mystery anymore.
Children hear all sorts of things they aren't supposed to be hearing. It is also possible that those parents talked about the miscarriage in front of the child when they thought he was too young to understand and remember --- adults make that mistake a lot.
Permalink Reply by Wesley on March 20, 2011 at 1:42pm christian near death experiences reflect christian ideology.... hindu near death experiences reflect hindu ideology..
http://www.near-death.com/hindu.html
Permalink Reply by Bryan B on March 21, 2011 at 1:59pm
Permalink Reply by Daria Black on March 20, 2011 at 5:17pm Yeah, I don't believe this story. Unfortunately, children can be coerced into saying anything because they want to please the adults around them. I wouldn't be surprised if the kid writes another book when he gets older exposing the scam.
There may not be a lot of arguments on Amazon simply because it is a child and people may feel squeamish about attacking a kid even if what they are saying isn't true.
Permalink Reply by Samuel H. Kenyon on March 20, 2011 at 6:28pm From what I've seen/read it sounds like they accumulated many tall tales over a period of time from this kid, and then molded it into a unified story of going to heaven. Of course, they assume the most book-selling worthy conclusion, as opposed to the kid is just making stuff up and/or finding out about the so-called secret info of his parents from old photos / documents, etc. It wouldn't surprise me if he said a lot of other bullshit too that was wrong that they carefully don't mention.
Permalink Reply by Alayna on March 20, 2011 at 10:47pm Option 1: there really is a Heaven and a God, who mysteriously chooses to reveal Itself, not to atheists, not to the Pope, but to a 4-year-old son of a Pastor (strange choice, innit?)
Option 2: the Pastor himself is a man of (very) few scruples and brainwashed the ideas of this book into his gullible toddler.
Mmm... tough choice.
Permalink Reply by Albert Bakker on March 21, 2011 at 1:48am Obe's are artificially inducible by stimulating the right superior temporal gyrus and then the part of it a little above and to the back of your right ear.
It is a part of the cortex that is extremely sensitive to oxygen depletion. (It is not necessary to maintain oxygenated fully to survive, other parts of the brain are more important to that end.)
Quoth: "It has been suggested that out-of-body experiences are the result of a transient failure to integrate the visual, tactile, proprioceptive, and vestibular information that converges at the temporoparietal junction, especially on the right side of the brain." New England Journal of MedicinePeople from different faiths have similar experiences. If it happened to a Muslim he would probably see allah or muhammed. A Hindu would see someone else, a North American Indian something else again etc, etc. It all depends on what religion you were brainwashed into believing. It's just the mind playing tricks.
I suspect there is a lot of exageration in this book.
Permalink Reply by Arcus on March 21, 2011 at 6:55am I was born with a hernia and during the surgical removal I was clinically dead for a few minutes. Not quite sure exactly how long, but long enough for a nurse to have time informing my mom about the situation (and scaring her shitless).
Personal experience may not be the best evidence, but in this case it is good enough for me.
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