Yet, in so doing, they have exposed the acute faith-derangement syndrome (FDS) afflicting large swaths of the American public and thus, potentially, cleared the way for sanity-inducing treatment.

The religious and their cynical Hollywood panderers have offended reason and outraged aesthetics by generating a treacly tale of celestial sojourning so transparently trumped-up that only a fool could fail to see through it. The movie, and Fox News flack Sean Hannity’s credulous acceptance of it, is the subject of yesterday’s Sunday Secular Sermon by Jeffrey Tayler, “ Sean Hannity, very bad critic: Fox News, Sarah Palin pal help hit movie prey on the gullible.” The title tells it all, as does the STRIDENT opening paragraph: Such is the American appetite for real evidence of God and Christ. As expected, it got a notably low critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, though the public liked it a lot more (of course!): the movie earned more than 100 million dollars. Heaven is for Real was also made into a movie last year with Greg Kinnear in the role of Todd. So much for the Sophisticated Theologians™ who claim that such childish beliefs aren’t that common! The success of “heaven tourism” books goes to show that if you want to rake in the dosh, write something that convinces the public that heaven is a real place, and they have a chance to live forever with God. The book went to #1 on the New York Times best-seller list (in NONFICTION), as did, I think, Proof of Heaven. No matter that Colton’s dad was an impecunious preacher. No way a four-year-old could make stuff up like that, could he?-especially since Colton gave post-visit details to his parents (like encountering his younger sibling, who died in a hushed-up miscarriage) that he could not have known unless they were imparted by God.

I’ve written several times about the trio of “I-almost-died-but-went-to-Heaven-and-it’s- real” books, including the discredited Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander, the discredited The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven by Kevin and Alex Malarkey (good names) and the not-yet-discredited Heaven is for Real, by Todd Burpo and Lynn Vincent, detailing Colton Burpo’s (Todd son’s) visit to Heaven (including an encounter with a Very Large Jesus) when he survived an emergency appendectomy at the age of four.

Colton heaven