Man, he looks suspiciously well-tanned and groomed for someone hospitalized for a few weeks
Gabe Poirot had a serious skateboarding accident, and was in a coma for 18 days. When he recovered (which wasn’t due to the intensive medical care he received — it was thanks to a lady praying over him), he translated the experience into a book and an appearance on the ever-credulous Fox News.
What a load of horseshit.
My first reaction was to see his description of the afterlife as evidence that he was making everything up. Yeah, sure, the sand and the trees and the wind were all constantly singing the praises of Jesus, and everything was Jesus-soaked. Babble Jesus, Jesus, Jesus
to appeal to the most gullible Christians.
Second reaction: boy, that wasn’t heaven, that sounds like Hell. You’re lucky you got out after 18 days…imagine an eternity in that fever dream.
Thirdly, it’s true — we created gods in our image. His Jesus is a homoerotic Republican authoritarian fantasy. It’s Jesus of Finland.
POIROT: Yeah. Now, with every single person I meet, I tell them of the love of Christ, and that He did it all for them, and He died and rose again.
And also, I love how, you know, all these other testimonies, they didn’t meet a female Jesus. They didn’t meet a soft or a passive Jesus. Jesus is a man.
And especially in America, He’s been misrepresented. And especially, even, you know, there are so many cultural things that present Him as if He is some just tolerant guy. It is not the Jesus I met. He’s a lion. But He’s not a lion angry against me. He is a lion angry for me. He is a Mustang on my behalf. He did it all for me.
MCENANY: And what did He look like when you saw Him?
POIROT: Pure fire. He was 5’11”, like 6 feet, yet as tall as eternity. Like an ocean of love. Yet His eyes were burning white and red at the same time. And, I mean, talk about testosterone, like a Mustang. I’m telling you, He’s the Lion of Judah, and there’s a roar within His voice.
Right. His Jesus is loaded with testosterone and is angry for white conservative men everywhere.
People fall for this nonsense?
Man, that description of jebus sounds a whole lot like the MAGAt’s envisionment of trump
If you watched the animatronic comedy TV show “Dinosaurs” 35 years ago, the impopular stepmom got buried too early (the protagonist was too enthusiastic about burying her to check if she was gone) and she only had time to briefly test the celestial monorail before she was yanked back home from heaven.
Of course, in Iain Banks’ SF “Culture” series, some bad actors uploaded human minds to digital hells. That is why it is good to have a decent AI or robot looking out for you.
I wonder what species the flowers of heaven are? What pollinates them? Ditto for the trees.
Probly the least significant of questions to be answered but still. Got me curious.
He sure doesn’t seem upset to be back Guess it can’t have been that good that he wanted to stay there or was he rejected from it?
I do like that he speaks of love rather than the hate the MAGAt’s and Faux News types generally seem to exhibit so much of.
OTOH, seems like he brought back nothing we don’t already know or believe and nothing immediately helpful. The on the gripping hand at least he isn’t asking for $$$ or is he?
that dude is SO horny for jesus
Jesus can be anything if you’re selective enough in your reading of the Bible.
Somehow this powerful Jesus is incapable of delivering his own message to the world. He needs a clumsy skateboarder from Indiana to do the job.
@4 StevoR
The ‘love’ he describes seems so very hatey. And Jesus is very intolerant – but not of him. Only of the people he hates. Because what do you know, Jesus hates the same people he does.
But if he hung out with the right people he’d be telling us about his near death encounter with reptilian aliens, or Booboo the ancient warrior from Atlantis, or other equally silly stuff. But I bet Fox News wouldn’t have someone like that on.
You have a higher opinion of Fox News than I do. They have run many stories about UFOs!
@10 They ran an article about Noah’s Ark last week
As covered in the Infinite Thread
It is funny but it is not.
Head injuries can be devastating and you never really recover.
About 10 years ago, an old friend from undergraduate University went over the handlebars of his bike and hit his head. He wasn’t wearing a helmet.
First I heard about it, someone called me, said he was in the hospital, and probably dying.
He didn’t die though.
He recovered and left the hospital, more or less functional.
Except he lost all his memories of his past.
He didn’t recognize anyone that he knew before. Including all his friends and including me.
If you take a step back, this guy on Fox NoNews might have permanent brain damage that he will never really recover from.
An 18 day coma is at the level where that can happen.
PS. Another guy who was a passenger in a serious car accident, same thing.
He never really recovered and had two decades of erratic behavior before finally getting diagnosed.
Damage to his prefrontal cortex. He had the equivalent of a lobotomy.
He could do well with supervision but on his own was totally lost.
Aren’t mustangs generally considered to be vermin?
So…his Jesus is Blucifer? oO Dude, you didn’t go to heaven, that was Denver.
My favorite pop-cultural depiction of Jesus is in the graphic novel The Harrowing of Hell, where he is short, ugly, and physically weak. Also a proto-anarchist who is horrified at how Satan is going to conquer the world and oppress mankind in his name. I’ll take that Jesus over Gabe’s any day.
Hey, he’s doing anti-woke science, cut him some slack.
The spurious outputs and post-hoc reconstructions of a damaged brain are the best tools we have for this work. Funny how different people see different huge jacked deities, or sometimes nothing.
And especially in America, He’s been misrepresented. And especially, even, you know, there are so many cultural things that present Him as if He is some just tolerant guy. It is not the Jesus I met. He’s a lion. But He’s not a lion angry against me. He is a lion angry for me. He is a Mustang on my behalf. He did it all for me.
Had to swallow the vomit that suddenly appeared in my mouth.
POIROT: Pure fire. He was 5’11”, like 6 feet, yet as tall as eternity. Like an ocean of love. Yet His eyes were burning white and red at the same time. And, I mean, talk about testosterone, like a Mustang. I’m telling you, He’s the Lion of Judah, and there’s a roar within His voice.
Sounds more like a demon than an agent from heaven.
In this case, Poirot’s little grey cells seem to be underperforming.
@12 raven – Head injuries can be devastating and you never really recover.
So true.
I broke three bones in my head (MVA). Happened prior to Ct scans, wasn’t right for about two years and wonder to this day if it still affects me.
Was an ICU nurse for 15 years, took care of many coma patients. These people in comas receive numerous drugs to keep them sedated and alive at the same time. Does anybody really know what happens when a human mind is suspended in this state?
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
With a TY to WS
Yes, but is he a tame lion?
He’s the lion that Michael Palin fought in that Python sketch.
I saw this posted on social media, with a declaration that this revelation has destroyed the election campaign of some Democrat. Since we all know that they’re campaigning on the premise that Jesus doesn’t exist, and that’s the only issue they’ve talked about….
@ ^ NitricAcid Wonder if Muslims come back from comas seein the Muslim heaven and Mohammad, Buddhists come back dreaming, r,seeing Buddha, Hindus theri many gods, etc .. Must look that up later.
“People fall for this nonsense?”
The scam that defies eternity.
I reckon it’s outright lying. Perfectly explanatory, perfectly ordinary.
—
I like how he describes Jesus as a balding man with boobs () and shrivelled testicles and cankles and severe acne, but.
(The subconjunctival haemorrhage described is caused by polycythemia, another side effect)
@StevoR #4: He has a book to sell, so yes, he’s asking for money.
@2: Mother-in-law, not stepmother. And then she started talking about Dinosaur Heaven, got convinced to go onto a Dionsaur Televangelist program, then had another near-death experience where she was told to STFU or she’d go to Dinosaur Hell and be trapped in a world where everyone else was her son-in-law.
Well, my favourite Jesus Head canon is this:
My coma was only a short one,but in that one my brain just switched off like a light and switched back on again later. I feel cheated now. Jesus must have been on coffee break or something.
I wonder if anyone has actually confirmed Poirot’s accident story. Plenty of would be evangelists have made up cool stories to bolster their status.
“the sand and the trees and the wind were all constantly singing the praises of Jesus.” That reminded me of Mark Twain’s “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven.” The good captain, newly deceased, finds himself admitted through the pearly gates and is issued the requisite robes, halo, and harp. After about a week of eternity singing the praises of the Almighty, he lets on to a new, more experienced friend that he can’t play the harp, the robes are itchy, and he can’t get the halo to stay on. And he’s bored out of his mind. That’s when he finds all the usual panoply is just to ease humans into heaven by fulfilling their expectations. The real purpose of heaven is for you discover what you really want to do and give you eternity to practise it. That’s my idea of paradise.
Matthew @29: this guy may have had the same (non-)experience as you, but if all his close relatives are evangelical Christians, there’s no way they’d accept that as an answer. It’s quite possible they kept pestering him with “What didja see?!” and “Didja see Jesus?!” and “you were dead, you musta seen something of the afterlife!” He probably had to start answering “yes” and weaving some kind of story just to avoid disappointing all the people who’d been sitting by him and taking care of him while he was out.
It’s a hoary old trope.
I got the bot to find me 3 recent that made the media and are Wikipedified:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven_Is_for_Real
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/90_Minutes_in_Heaven
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Came_Back_from_Heaven
It’s always self-serving.
Daniel,
That’s most certainly not my idea of paradise; I already know what I really want to do, and part of it is not having to fucking try to find some purpose. Paradise is being left alone and not having to strive for anything!
Also, it’s pretty silly to claim that nobody who has ever discovered what they really want to do shan’t be going to heaven, since that equates it to purgatory in the Catholic tradition. Fuck practicing something for eternity; that is Sysyphean.
@ ^ John Morales : if what you want to do is to just relax and do nothing for eternity then that’s what that idea lets you do. Just practice doing nothing including not practicing and, yeah, bit of a paradox but within the broad scope of that heavenly concept there!
My contradiction to that idea being my wanting to do and save and achieve things on Earth not in Heaven. For instance saving the Parklands from destruction by our current evil state govt. Preventing Global Overheating and getting real climate action. Changing the past so we don’t have the current utterly awful timeline we’re now living in e.g. being in the alternate universe where Kamala is POTUS now with Gore and HRC having been POTi before her creating a vastly different world to live in than the one we have now, etc… Dunno how any possible heaven would allow for that unless they gave me control over how the universe had worked and its history which would no doubt change things for others without their say or desires even if my alternate cosmos was better for them so.. yeah.
There’s also the idea that any sort of eternity would eventually become some sort of torture and that an eternal god would want to end their own existence as a short story I vaguely recall reading by Arthur C Clarke or maybe Isaac Asimov or someone else once noted when an atheist (?) dies and finds go and finds god wanting the protagonist to find a way of ending god.
StevoR, who said anything about relaxing?? I certainly did not.
Not having to strive is not the same as relaxing! Neither is not having to find a purpose.
I was in no way ambiguous!
I don’t want a purpose, I have no reason to find one, I don’t need one, and what I want to do is MY OWN THING — which does not mean NOTHING, or A CONSTANT PERPETUAL THING.
(I do wish people responded to what I wrote, not to something else I never said)
PS. My own idea of heaven personally would be an endless library where I can read, learn and explore all I want, a starship capable of allowing me to visit all sorts of different worlds and explanetary systems in safety and comfort and explore and learn about them, the bushland at its best endlessly and being able to know everything about it, family and friends and the world being happy and safe for everyone and more along those sort of lines.
Ah yes, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel
@ ^ John Morales :Not quite. A much better and more useful and pleasurable version of it.
Also at your #36 maybe I musinderstood & sorry for that I guess I menat that any such heaven would allow you to not have a purpose if that’s really your desire.
Ofc ,in reality no heaven exists and we only have the lives we have in the world we have and any purpose we have is that we choose or what instinct drives us to, so this is all moot philosophical musing anyhow..
Its difficult to imagine anything eternal that doesn’t eventually turn into torture from boredom.
Jesus v. Jeezus, from 2005. The dynamic has been going on for a while. Note the “pure fire” mane of hair (“a lion”) on “Jeezus”.
[ thepaincomics domain lapsed a few years ago, and there were no new comics after 2013. However, Tim Kreider is still around, and posting mostly text, eg: “The Arbogast Fallacy“, from July of this year ]
Mr. Morales, perhaps I expressed my take on the book poorly. By practicing what you were really meant to do, I give you one example from the story about a nebbishly little clerk on Earth who never showed any promise or prominence but who in Twain’s Heaven is recognized as a poet so sublime that Shakespeare and Homer are his attendents. But perhaps you should actually read the story, maybe paired with Twain’s “The Mysterious Stranger” (featuring Lucifer) before you raise your hackles in umbrage.
Daniel, I went by what you wrote.
I just checked the entry for it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extract_from_Captain_Stormfield%27s_Visit_to_Heaven) and see it’s probably a satire taking the piss regarding ‘pie in the sky when you die’ and all that.
@23. NitricAcid Wonder if Muslims come back from comas seeing the Muslim heaven and Mohammad, Buddhists come back dreaming, er,seeing Buddha, Hindus their many gods, etc .. Must look that up later.
Which I’ve now done, FWIW, and found :
Source : https://near-death.com/the-anomaly-of-muslim-near-death-experiences/
So seems Near Death Experiences are very rare for Muslims.
Plus seems a lot of Buddhist NDE’s are actually pretty hellish and unpleasant :
Source : https://spiritdaily.org/Buddhistneardeath.htm
In addition to the Hindu accounts described here :
Source : https://www.sanskritimagazine.com/life-death-near-death-experiences-hindus/
@23. NitricAcid Wonder if Muslims come back from comas seeing the Muslim heaven and Mohammad, Buddhists come back dreaming, er,seeing Buddha, Hindus their many gods, etc .. Must look that up later.
Which I’ve now done, FWIW, and found :
Source : https://near-death.com/the-anomaly-of-muslim-near-death-experiences/
So seems Near Death Experiences are very rare for Muslims.
Plus seems a lot of Buddhist NDE’s are actually pretty hellish and unpleasant :
Source : https://spiritdaily.org/Buddhistneardeath.htm
In addition to the Hindu accounts described here :
Source : https://www.sanskritimagazine.com/life-death-near-death-experiences-hindus/
I guess it wasn’t necessary to explain the Jesus was white?