Casper-Friendly Theology
More Christians than you'd imagine believe in ghosts.
David Swanson
April 1, 2006
According to a 2003 Harris poll, 96 percent of adults who self-identified as Christians believe Jesus was resurrected. More surprisingly, 50 percent of these Christians believe in the existence of ghosts, 27 percent believe in astrology as a means to make decisions, and 21 percent believe in reincarnation (that they were someone else in a past life).
With this in mind, Mary Roach's latest book, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (W. W. Norton, 2005) makes good reading not just for those looking for an interesting and sometimes humorous look at scientific attempts to prove the existence of the soul, but also for those of us who minister to people with souls, even if those people are not clear on what their soul is.
Roach, whose first book, Stiff, examined in equal detail what happens to the body after death, writes that she was raised in a Christian home, but the faith didn't take "because science kept putting it on the spot."
When she decided to examine beliefs about the soul, it was natural for her to turn to science.
"Flawed as it is, science remains the most solid god I've got," writes Roach. "And so I decided to turn to it, to see what it had to say on the topic of life after death. I know what religion says, and it perplexes me. …
"Religion says your soul goes to heaven or possibly to a seven-tiered garden, or that your soul is reincarnated into a new body, or that you lie around in your coffin clothes until the Second Coming. Which means that for millions of people, religion will turn out to have been a bum steer as regards the hereafter. Science seemed the better bet."
Whether or not Roach does know what religion says about the afterlife is open for discussion. However, you've got to admire her spunk.
Initially I ...
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