Heaven is For Real

[plcdude]

Many in my family think this book is fantastic. I know it won't be pleasant but I feel the need to disabuse them of this irrational opinion. Anyone else have experience with this?

[onager]

1. Do they know Sarah Palin's ghost-writer "wrote" it?

On edit: sorry for the delay in responding, I just saw your post. Doing weekend catch-up on DU...

This POS was "co-written" by Lynn Vincent, who also collaborated (i.e., did all the actual writing) on Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue:"

And there's an excellent take-down of this glurge by Susan Jacoby in the WaPo:

These were details, his father said, that the boy could not possibly have known had he not really visited heaven, because he had never been shown a picture of the wounded Jesus. Right. It’s understandable that the son of an evangelical pastor must have seen absolutely no prior images of the crucified Jesus or heard anything about heaven as a place with puffy clouds and winged creatures...

This part is interesting. "I Pulled Heaven Out of My Butt" is apparently a flop in the UK:

What is truly disturbing about this book’s huge commercial success is that it attests to the prevalence of unreason among vast numbers of Americans. (The book is way down in the ranks on Amazon.com in the United Kingdom.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/spirited-atheist/post/heaven-is-for-real-and-the-immature-american-mind/2011/03/30/AFhr112B_blog.html

[MineralMan]

2. I leave family members alone with their superstitions.

They're welcome to them, if they can believe them, and I see no compelling reason to dispute with them. In my extended family, politics and religion are not usual topics for conversation. There's so much we can discuss without them, and it's much nicer around the table at holidays if things are pleasant.

If someone mentioned the book, I'd just nod and say I'd heard of it. Then, we'd talk about the antics of one of the great nieces or nephews, or tell some old story from long ago another time. I prefer this sort of family gathering to the political and religious wars of some families I know.