If you pay attention to the Internet, you’ve probably seen commentary on the Newsweek article about heaven written by a neurosurgeon.

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Sam Harris, who has a PhD in neuroscience, rips this guy (and the integrity of Newsweek) a new one.

Everything—absolutely everything—in Alexander’s account rests on repeated assertions that his visions of heaven occurred while his cerebral cortex was “shut down,” “inactivated,” “completely shut down,” “totally offline,” and “stunned to complete inactivity.” The evidence he provides for this claim is not only inadequate—it suggests that he doesn’t know anything about the relevant brain science…

Alexander believes that his E. coli-addled brain could not have produced his visions because they were too “intense,” too “hyper-real,” too “beautiful,” too “interactive,” and too drenched in significance for even a healthy brain to conjure. He also appears to think that despite their timeless quality, his visions could not have arisen in the minutes or hours during which his cortex (which surely never went off) switched back on. He clearly knows nothing about what people with working brains experience under the influence of psychedelics.

I think what Sam Harris is saying is, “I’ve totally done DMT.”

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I like Sam Harris a lot. I don’t always agree with him but think his simple writing and speaking, while kind of boring, is really effective. This article is probably the most outraged I’ve ever heard his tone. Probably because the guy writing the original article is supposed to be highly educated in brain science.

Anyway, I think I’ve posted this before, but here’s a free printable poster of list of contradictions in the Bible from Sam’s website:

http://www.project-reason.org/gallery3/image/102/