Killing for Jesus

Insanity in action.

i was just hinting about this (see next entry) and here it is again. A self-alleged spokesperson for God is yapping violence.

Poll Finds Regular Worshipers More Supportive Of War In Iraq

This takes me back to when I turned 18 and had to register for the draft. The war in Vietnam was raging on. Some of my acquaintances had already been drafted. A couple had come back in coffins. No one was explaining in clear language what was so important about us traveling halfway around the world to kill communists for peace.

I was quite dismayed at the churches through all of this. They supported the killing. I could not grasp why, considering that one of the commandments specifically said "Thou shalt not kill." If all these famous evangelists were right about the virtues of fighting this war, in my mind it turned God into a major jerk.

I would later amend my views. I decided that God was fine and that organized religions had distorted, perverted, and otherwise trashed the God of Love. Much of my changing views on God came from my studies of near-death experiences and their implications. NDErs by the droves came back to say that we didn't understand God and that God and Jersus are pissed at what goes on in their name.

I just cannot grasp the total illogic that goes on when people can 1) get passionately excited about the so-called "right to life" and 2) support the so-called war on terror. How can you believe in the sanctity of life on one hand and be a war monger on the other hand?

Psst! Anybody see any weapons of mass destruction? (Not including all our nukes, I mean.)

It's just too clear that evangelical Christians who use their "faith in God" to explain so much have absolutely no faith in God to protect us from terror.

The "Brains Cause NDEs" Theory

According to [psychologist Susan] Blackmore, these [NDEs] are nothing but the manifestations of a dying brain deprived of oxygen during its last moments. Period. There’s no soul here preparing for afterlife, no karmic overview, no Mr Big G at the end of that tunnel. But that’s fine; no problems either. In fact, if the experience can transform us into better human beings we should be able to learn to live with that, right?

The whole story.

Many near-death experiencers believe that they went out-of-body to a place literallly out of this world. People like Susan Blackmore think that these people are victims of brain hallucinations.

People who have had NDEs wonder how some of the things that have happened could possibly happen under the brain theory. For example, how could this woman leave her body during surgery, travel home, and discover secret details about life at her house—especially if her brain were making it all up?

Meanwhile, if what Susan Blackmore has made a media career of claiming is true—that our brain is doing all of this—then why aren't we doing much more research on the hidden talengs of the brain? Near-death experiences create amazing behavioral changes. People who were mean and nasty people before their experiences have stunning turn-arounds in response to this amazing show (whether staged by brains or God or the heavenly system.)

The point is that something extraordinary is happening, and yet maybe it's really ordinary—just part of our nature that we don't readily accept yet. Whatever it is, I am intrigued to know more. I just wish more people were.

Racing for God

Okay, I'm impressed. Here is a story about a race driver's NDE reported in a mainstream newspaper. But then again, Iowa is where Field of Dreams happened.

"Is this Heaven?"

"No, it's Iowa."

Buy an iBook, Have an NDE

Just having fun imagining the greeting on the other side someone would get if they died or nearly died trying to buy a used Mac laptop under these conditions!

The Day I Died

Found this short NDE account on the Internet.

Peter Jennings Just Morphed

As a social designer, I often like to think about how the world would be if we lived by different rules than the norm. What would happen if we changed some of the major rules that the majority of us agree to play by?

For example, millions of Americans have had near-death experiences where they stepped outside of their bodies, often during a near-fatal accident or surgery, and suddenly found themselves standing in a whole new existence. Yet since these are largely subjective and unverifiable experiences, they never make the news.

I have always wondered what would happen to the social fabric of our land if NDEs were reported on the news. How would it change things if we got a more balanced view of the death experience?

As it is, if you watch the news objectively, closely observing the language and the content, you would see that it continually shapes a vision of death as tragic and death as finality. Many people would go, “Well, yeah, death is tragic and death is final.”

But those millions of people who have experienced otherwise do not have a voice.

Peter Jennings just died.

I am amazed thinking about what he could have done with this story. I think about the first time he discovered that he beat death even though he died. What would that be like for a guy who spent the majority of his life reporting the news, much of which is about death? And how would he feel suddenly discovering that death as we have always thought of it in mainstream media is not how we always thought of it.

If death doesn’t truly kill us, it changes everything. It means that many paradigms driving our material culture are as dead wrong as when everyone thought Earth was pancake flat.

As a media culture, we dote on graphic details of fatal car wrecks, plane crashes, and murders, but ironically we seldom publicly ponder what happens next to the victims who died. The news media assume flatline oblivion and focus mostly on the gore of the exit scenes.

Today we launched a $720 million mission to Mars. We are still anxious to discover if that planet could have supported life.

But we won’t seriously investigate—despite growing anecdotal evidence—whether or not souls survive death, and if they do, what that means to our bottom line. The ruling media culture generally defines those who ponder the afterlife as escapists trying to avoid a harsh reality by making up stories of gossamer-winged froufrou.

According to the International Association of Near-Death Studies (IANDS), over 11 million Americans remember leaving their bodies as they approached death—that ultimately did not occur. Many were even clinically dead before being resuscitated. Still, mainstream society thinks it’s more okay to scientifically fantasize about the origin of life on Mars than to fantasize similarly about life after so-called death here at home. And reincarnation? Phooey!

I like wondering about the huge social impact that would occur if someone ever proved beyond that proverbial shadow of doubt that souls survive death. A whole paradigm shift in news and entertainment would await us.

It would be harder to feel the wrenching impact of crime shows if murder, instead of someone’s end, actually meant a ticket to paradise. If villains and heroes became conscious of creating their next-life futures through their current-life actions, they might all choose to be more heroic. Win-win.

Our news and most social institutions portray death as tragic. Clearly, anyone in grief knows the depth of personal loss. However, anyone who has emerged from a near-death experience or received intimate proof of soul survival doesn’t buy the death myth anymore. Suddenly they embrace a different reality.

Many people think that speculating on an afterlife as a religious issue. I think of it as studying nature—human nature. If there’s more to human nature than termination for whom the final bell tolls, I want to know about it. I want to see the big plasma screen HDTV picture.

Borderline Personality Disorder

Does someone you know and possibly love have very erratic mood swings?

Does he or she agree to something one day and the next day says something completely different?

Does that person love you one day and hate you the next, with hardly any detectable transition?

Does that person hate to be alone and feel abandoned or rejected over the tiniest issues?

Is she highly sensitive, to the point where you learn to stifle your spontaneous speech as a way to prevent an outburst?

That person may be suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder.

About 10% of the adult population is estimated to suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder.