Heaven is for Real

Heaven is for Real is a book of bullcrap by pastor  Todd Burpo and Lynn Vincent. It tells a true fictional story about how his three-year-old son, Colton, goes to Heaven. So-called, "proof," is provided by the fact that Colton supposedly, "met," his sister who had been miscarried in Heaven.

Summary
Colton is the three-year-old son of a pastor, who has been brainwashed by his Christian parents. Despite their praying, Colton's appendix bursts, and he needs emergency surgery to get rid of it. When they cart him away to the operating room, he screams and screams. His dad, Todd (who wrote this book with Sarah Palin's ghost writer-surprise, surprise), goes into a private room and yells at God. Of course, in reality he's yelling at nobody and making himself feel worse, but his religion is his problem, not ours.

Colton survives, but four months later he begins to tell Todd and Todd decides that Colton went to Heaven. The only evidence he has is from a four-year-old talking about something that happened when he was three. But according to Colton and Todd:
 * Colton was carried to Heaven by Jesus and some angels.  At one point, Colton sat on Jesus's lap and the angels sang songs to them.
 * Colton met God, his miscarried sister, John the Baptist, and his great-grandfather who has been dead for thirty years.
 * Jesus wore a white robe with a purple sash.  Colton says he has, "markers," on his hands and feet. He also rides a rainbow-colored horse
 * Colton says he "left his body."  He could see his dad yelling at God in the little room, his mom making phone calls, and the doctors operating on him.
 * Colton did, "homework," in Heaven.
 * In Heaven, everybody has wings.  The one exception is Jesus, who moves, 'like an elevator."
 * At one point, Todd has to do a funeral. When Colton finds out what a funeral is, he keeps demanding to know if the guy was Christian and that if he isn't Christian, he'll go to Hell.
 * Ironically, Colton also says that, "Jesus loves all children." So is this an exception to the pointer above, or is the point above an exception to this?
 * After Colton's near-death experience, his parents got $23,000 in medical bills, and Colton told them that Jesus said that they needed to pay the doctor because he, "fixed me."

Counter Argument
Plenty of people have come up with stories like this before. Colton could certainly have been hallucinating. The fact that he, "met," his dead great-grandfather could be totally misremembered. There is such a thing as an illusion of memory, which could force Colton to "remember" that he saw his dead great-grandfather in a hallucination he had when he actually overheard his parents talking about it. After all, he was only three, and utterly brainwashed. Studies have shown that the hallucinations of kids often have a lot to do with the way they're brought up

This video and |the corresponding article are yet somebody else's version of Heaven. If you compare the two, you discover that there actually are many differences. So at least one of these stories is wrong because they can't co-exist. Chances are that both of them are.

Reception
The book became a No. 1 New York Times bestseller. That goes to show that more and more people are becoming stupid idiots because of idiotic Christian books, and more and more stupid idiots are buying such books for their friends.

Picture Book
In order to make thousands of dollars in additional profit while brainwashing thousands more young people, Todd and his wife, Sonja, have released a picture book version. It has a lame forward from Todd and Sonja about how children need somebody to teach them about Jesus. On the second page, it says, "Did you know that Heaven is just like the Bible tells us? It is wonderful and it is for real."

Think about it like this: imagine a children's book where on the second page, the words are, "Did you know that salt is very good to eat? It is wonderful, and it is healthy." Now of course, maybe a few people believe that; but it probably isn't true, and nobody would ever publish a book for a five-year-old like that or give that book to their kids. The only difference between these two statements is that a lot more people believe the former, and it is a lot less likely to be true.