In just a few days the British Museum will open its much anticipated Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead Exhibition. I have always thought that one of the best arguments in favor of Ernest Becker’s thesis in The Denial of Death is the historical and cultural fact of ancient Egypt.
While it is hard to agree [...]
Tags:afterlife·ancestors·Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead·book of the dead·British Museum·death anxiety·Egyptian religion·Ernest Becker·guide to afterlife·heaven·papyri·paradise·scrolls·soul beliefs·The Denial of Death·Vanessa Thorpe
There are many who believe that near death experiences (“NDE”) provide evidence of the existence of a spirit-soul and that those who have these close encounters with death have glimpsed another realm. Over at Brain Blogger, Jennifer Gibson discusses some recent studies of NDEs in a post titled “Light at the End of the Tunnel [...]
Tags:altered states of consciousness·American Indians·Asian Indians·Brain Blogger·Buddhist·carbon dioxide·Christian·consciousness·cultural imprinting·cultural patterning·Glenn Roberts·hallucinations·heaven·Hindu·Jennifer Gibson·Jesus·John Owen·Krishna·metaphysical realm·metaphysics·Muslim·NDE·near death experience·pan-human neurology·Siddhartha·soul·spirit·supernatural·The Near Death Experience·Vishnu·Wakan Tanka·Yamdoots·Yamraj
Having long been interested in art and aesthetics, I must confess to a morbid fascination with Thomas Kinkade’s paintings. Most are portrayals of settings that are utterly unreal, sort as if Maxwell Parrish visited Middle Earth while wearing rose-colored glasses and then decided to paint quaint little cottages in the Shire.
At other times I’ve thought [...]
Tags:aesthetics·angels·art·Christians·Currier & Ives·Freud·halos·heaven·luminosity·Maxwell Parrish·Middle Earth·painter of light·religious environment·The Shire·Thomas Kinkade·wish fulfillment
There is perhaps no better way to demystify something than to perform a genealogical operation on it. The intellectual genealogy was pioneered by Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals) and used to great effect by Foucault (The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Order of Things). Elaine Pagels, a professor of religion at Harvard, employs this [...]
