
AT LAST! SANITY, SKEPTICISM PREVAIL ON PRIME TIME TV

Claims By a Writer Who Says She Talked to Jesus Were
Critically Examined on Last Week's 20/20 Program

by Conrad Goeringer

     Betty J. Eadie says that she died, went to heaven, talked to Jesus,
and returned to earth with a message.

     The message has sold 4,000,000 copies of her book "Embraced by the
Light" in 26 countries and made Betty Eadie a sought-after speaker,
especially on the New Age chat circuit.  But despite the book's growing
popularity, not everyone is buying what Betty has to say.

     Last week's installment of the ABC newsmagazine "20/20" was a
pleasant departure from the credulous tone found in numerous
documentaries, specials and investigations into the paranormal, occult
and religious.  While noting that many individuals -- including Betty
Eadie -- report NDE's or "Near Death Experiences," "20/20" presented
psychologist Susan Blackmore who skillfully explained the NDE phenomena
in scientific terms.  Blackmore is a psychologist at the University of
the West of England in Bristol. Her own investigations have transformed
her from being an initial "believer" in such paranormal phenomena into a
skeptic.

     Among the common recollections of NDE are:

     **Hovering and looking down on one's body laying on an operating
table or bed, even on the ground or in the remains of machinery following
an accident.

     **Being "pulled" into a bright tunnel and experiencing intense
feelings of love, warmth, joy and resolution.

     **Encountering angels, gods, other supernatural beings.

     Blackmore noted that death is a process of neurological decay, where
brain cells are firing rapidly and in random, producing all manner of
subjective experiences.  She explained the "tunnel" by the gradual decay
of cells in the visual cortex, and surmised that the NDE is a function of
brain activity rather than some mystical or religious event.

     Experiments have also duplicated the "hovering" sensation, through
the use of drugs such as tetrodotoxin.  Subjects in laboratory trials
were administered similar chemicals and reported levitating out of their
own bodies, "looking down" on themselves and others.  One ingenious
experiment asked the subjects to levitate and examine numbers which were
mounted face-up near the roof of the lab room. Although test subjects
often had the experience of viewing the numbers, their recollections
never did match the actual digits on the control cards.  Obviously, they
-- and their eyes -- stayed in bed.

     "20/20" also noted that Eadie has a religious background, having
spent time in a Roman Catholic boarding school as a child on the Rosebud
Indian Reservation.  Records which would confirm the fact that she did,
in fact, die while having a hysterectomy have not been released.

     Betty Eadies's "messages" from heaven are often vague or speak of
"love"  and "understanding."  Those depicted attending her lectures,
asking questions or getting her to sign copies of her book frequently
cried and expressed gratitude to Eadie for her claim that their "loved
one's" lived on in an afterlife.  Betty Eadie is quite matter-of-fact
about heaven, too.  Do our pets survive to be with us in an afterlife?
She says they do. (What about germs, sharks, ticks or killer bees?)

     One of the more disturbing claims of Ms. Eadie, though, concerns the
holocaust. Eadie insists that Jews were, in a sense, responsible for
their own deaths at the hands of Nazis "because they were on earth for a
divine purpose."  She also claims that EVERYBODY goes to heaven, from our
pets to Adolph Hitler and Pol Pot.  A comforting thought.

     Unfortunately, no one at "20/20" thought to ask Betty Eadie (or any
other NDE-travellers who claim to have ventured to heaven) why she did
not return with a cure for cancer, AIDS, or perhaps a useful formula for
energy production -- something that would tend to support such an
astounding claim as that of meeting a god.  Eadie says, however, that she
was sent back to earth alive, "for a purpose" and when she is done with
her work she will die.  For now, that purpose seems to involve books,
lectures, and glowing stories about the hereafter.

     Both hosts of "20/20", Hugh Downs and Barbara Walters, expressed
skepticism at Betty Eadie's claims.  Downs suggested that Eadie, however,
believed her own story and had obviously experienced "something."
Unfortunately, this "20/20" installment was not a thorough autopsy of a
religious or paranormal claim. It did not discuss the possible
motivations of Eadie (ranging from hallucination to outright fraud), nor
did it examine the even more crucial element of why so many persons
believe claims of this type without good, substantial evidence.  But it
was refreshing to see at least some counter-evidence presented.  One
senses that Dr. Blackmore said a great deal more about the "Near Death
Experience" that ended up on the cutting-room floor at ABC.  Perhaps,
though, this program is at least a start for some segments of the news
media to take a more critical and skeptical approach in dealing with
claims of the occult, paranormal, and religious.

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