Seeing angels

Monday, 21st September 2009

Theories about heavenly visitations are put to the test in the LA Times:

Geiger begins with the stories of three people who had near-fatal experiences -- Ron DiFrancesco, one of the last people out of the South Tower of the World Trade Centre before it collapsed on 9/11; James Sevigny, a mountain climber severely injured in an avalanche while climbing in Canada; and Stephanie Schwabe, an underwater explorer who lost her guideline in an underwater cave in the Bahamas. As different as each experience was, all three were visited by a ghostly visitor that calmed them, instilled hope and enabled them to rescue themselves...
Geiger gathers many such stories and reports on various theories offered to explain them. His book is engrossing, balanced (no barbs are directed at sceptics or believers) -- and, in the end, this book may be more challenging to some people's religious beliefs than either Christopher Hitchens' "God Is Not Great" or Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion." Why? Most of us, when the question of God's existence comes up with friends in a restaurant, don't debate it in terms of what Hitchens or Dawkins has to say (though I'm sure there are some who do). We speak more personally -- about what we feel, about incidents that seem providential and not coincidental...