How do I respond to people who say
they have been to heaven?
And this is the subject of, you know, best-selling books. There's that little four-year-old kid, Colton Burpo, who
his parents said, you know, he died
but when he came back-- He died, according to the doctors
but then he came back to life like they rescued him,
and he said that while he was incapacitated, he had gone to heaven
and his explanation of what that's like is so vivid and,
"Look at how real it--" It had to be real, right?
And Dr. Eben Alexander was a more recent one. He wrote a book
like "Heaven is Real" and
he talked about how he-- The doctor said he-- As a doctor, he's a smart dude, right?
He was dead and he went to heaven, and he came back.
It's funny because their explanations of heaven,
whether it's those two guys or anybody else who has a story, and a lot of people have their story,
their explanations of heaven
are almost too similar
which I think a lot of Christians would say, "See? That's evidence that it actually happened".
And I would argue, "No, that's proof that we all kind of have the same conception of what heaven is like".
You know, angels, and clouds, and harps, and things like that.
That's the general idea of heaven.
If I were to have a dream about what heaven is like,
that's probably what it would sound like to me, too.
And the funny thing is as detailed as their stories are,
for every Colton Burpo book that is out there, and there are many,
there are books that pick apart his story
and explain that, "You know this thing that they said there was no way he could have known?"
Well, there is a way he could have known that, and here it is.
I remember reading a piece that ripped apart Dr. Alexander's book.
And, you know, they said--
You know, he said he was dead,
like legally dead for many days.
But actually they talked to the doctors in question, or the nurses in question, and they said,
"No, that wasn't really the case".
Or Dr. Alexander said, "This is what the weather was like when I was--"
Out of the question and it was out of-- I forgot the details but,
you know, "The weather was like this".
And the author of this piece said, "I talked to a meteorologist
who could actually look up what the weather was like
and it's not what the guy said it was".
It's like, you know, they reconstruct these stories in their head.
They believe it to be real. I'm not calling either of those guys liars.
I think they really believe they were in heaven and back,
but I think a lot of us could experience-- You know, when we're on the verge of death
you have a lot of ideas, a lot of hallucinations, a lot of things that are very vivid to you
and hey, if you are fortunate enough to come back to life or to,
you know, at least get out of the coma or whatever stage you're in,
of course you want to talk about what that was like. You saw the light at the end of the tunnel.
Tell us what that was like.
And of course the more they tell the story, the more descriptive it becomes.
And the more descriptive it is, the more believable it is, because
why would anyone make something up like that?
It's always funny to me that you always see
more people who say,
"I almost died and I went to heaven".
You never hear about their journeys of when they went to hell.
Should there be an equal number of books of people saying, you know, "I almost died" and
"Oh, then I saw Satan and he was coming to take me away".
Those books like never sell.
So, you don't hear about those stories very much, because everyone wants to be--
You know, they want to hear something optimistic.
And telling people that heaven is for real isn't just a good story
like it's a marketing gimmick. It's a great marketing gimmick.
So, I don't know, I don't believe any of this stuff. Every time I hear a story
about someone who said they went to heaven,
and it's always a Christian version of heaven, too. You never hear like a Buddhist
say, "I got reincarnated and this is
what my past several lives were like"
and it's always verified. That never happens. It's never verified like that.
And it's you never hear any, you know, other religion
that buys into the same idea here.
And again, why does that happen?
Maybe it's because we start hearing these stories, "Oh, that guy died and went to heaven?"
Maybe if I'm on the verge of death, I might go to heaven, too.
You just have to ask yourself like, where are the citations for these stories?
Are there third party independent people who can verify all these things they are saying?
And the truth is: no, no one can verify what they're saying. No one can back it up.
There are holes in all of their stories
that people who want to believe them, they just overlook.
Because they want to believe the story, because they want to believe that there is something
waiting for us on the other side.
And again, I understand that. I empathize with that.
But there isn't, and the proof isn't there,
and those books are not proof.
If they say they almost died, they went to heaven. Like,
"Okay I'm glad you're alive.
I'm glad you're doing okay,
but we don't have to take your hallucination that seriously". You know, every time I hear their stories
I just want to say, "Citation needed"
because all the stuff they're saying
the only people who believe it
happen to be the people in their circles.
And when they cite these third parties, like this doctor might,
he has no stake in what happened to me
but even he said I was legally dead.
It's like, "Well no, maybe
there was something wrong with the diagnosis, maybe you were never going to die in the first place.
Maybe they thought you were dead but you really weren't.
Maybe there's some bad medicine going around".
But there's still
no evidence that anyone has ever been to heaven and come back to tell us about it. There's no evidence that anyone
went to hell and came back to tell us about it either.
These are stories we want to believe.
And especially if you're prone to believe in it,
it might happen to you. Like there's a reason
it's only religious people
who believe they can talk to Jesus and they vividly can tell you about a time Jesus was talking to them.
Like those hallucinations never happen to like
non-Christians.
And even if it did, even if an atheist said like, "Man, I saw angels, I saw wings",
it doesn't mean it actually happened; it means
that they too-- We all have this conception of what heaven looks like, whether or not you believe in it.
And there's a reason we all kind of coalesce around those same ideas
if we are in that unfortunate position that we are suffering from some,
you know, disease or, you know, we're in that-- we had an accident.
There's a reason we all might picture the same sort of afterlife,
because it's the one-- It's the story we're all accustomed to.
You know, if you ask those people who died and said they saw angels,
draw what the angels look like,
it's amazing how similar
those angels will look. It's not like they ever deviate from the
haloed, you know, wing flapping angels that you always picture.
It's the same reason if you ask people what Martians look like,
they always look like Hollywood's version of what Martians look like.
It's never anything unique that they came up with on their own.
They have this idea like, "Oh, I got abducted by aliens".
and "Oh, my experience was just like that movie that you saw or that sci-fi book that you read". It's the same principle at work here
which is we all have the same ideas of the supernatural, of aliens, of all the science fiction stuff.
So, of course, if you have a dream or you have an idea that is so vivid that it feels real to you,
it's very similar to all those ideas that are passed around anyway.
It's just another reason not to take people seriously
when they say they've had that experience.
My name is Hemant Mehta. I write at FriendlyAtheist.com
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