While I have no problem with the possibility of an ancient coastal city named Atlantis being destroyed by a volcano, earthquake, or tsunami, it's an entirely different thing, however, to believe that the inhabitants of this city were aliens, were magical, or were technologically advanced to the point of possessing nuclear weapons and aircraft. A city meeting with a disastrous end is not such a far-fetched idea. It could happen. It has happened. There is still a problem with even this most down-to-earth Atlantis claim, however: we have no good evidence that it happened to a city named Atlantis. Apart from Plato's mention of Atlantis in his writings7 more than two thousand years ago, supposedly based on a very old story he heard about, there is nothing else to back it up. History is silent on Atlantis. This should raise a gigantic red flag in everyone's mind. The most reasonable conclusion is that Plato was relating a fictional story as a teaching tool.
If there really was a prominent culture that boasted supernatural powers, was run by aliens, had astonishing technology, or was, at the very least, a major political and military power of the day, there should be direct and obvious references to it in other writings by other cultures. But they are not there. Archaeologist Kenneth Feder, author of Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology, has considered the Atlantis claim and concludes that the cross-cultural silence about it is telling. He cites the supposed war between Atlantis and Athens that Plato described as one example:
It is inconceivable that there would be no mention of a great military victory by Athens over Atlantis—or anyplace even vaguely like it—in the works of Greek historians who followed Plato. Yet this is precisely the case…. Similarly, you will not read the discourses of modern historians arguing for or disputing the historicity of The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, because these are understood, of course, to be works of fiction. In much the same way, Greek historians who followed Plato did not feel the need even to discuss his story of Atlantis; they understood it as the work of fiction Plato intended it to be.8
The Atlantis scenario may be plausible in some basic form, that is, a coastal or island city was hit by a natural disaster such as an earthquake or a tsunami. However, the popular descriptions of a magical, advanced, and powerful ancient Atlantis are far from convincing for anyone who demands good reasons to believe unusual claims. It's difficult, for example, to get past the idea of Berlitz's nuclear war occurring ten thousand years before the Dark Ages. There is also a practical problem for those who insist Atlantis was a “continent.” “City” and “continent” are not interchangeable, as it might seem given the inconsistent manner in which Atlantis is described. This distinction matters. While it might be relatively easy to misplace an ancient city underwater somewhere, losing a continent is another matter entirely. I am sure oceanographers and geologists would have found it by now. Believers suggest that the continent simply flooded over. Of course that raises the question, Where did all the necessary extra water come from to do that? It might have sunk deeper into the earth after an earthquake and then been covered by water, they say. Possible, I suppose, but there is no geological evidence to support such a spectacular event occurring in relatively recent times. Keep in mind that the time frame is important because it makes it even more unlikely. We know that continents can move great distances and land can change dramatically over many millions of years. But eleven thousand years or so seems like too little a time frame to hide a continent-sized landmass from the prying eyes of modern scientists.
As for the extreme claims of magical or high-tech powers that dominate popular Atlantis belief, they are almost certainly nothing more than the products of human imagination. Where else would these ideas come from? After all, no one has ever come forward with any confirmed Atlantis artifacts. For that matter, no one has ever produced a single artifact of any kind from any ancient culture that demonstrates supernatural powers or advanced technology. But that doesn't stop some people from confidently declaring that the people of Atlantis were extraterrestrials, used crystal energy to power their civilization, could control the planet's weather, and are responsible for missing ships and planes in the Bermuda Triangle. But until somebody actually shows up at a press conference with an eleven thousand-year-old nuclear-powered chariot that levitates and has a big A engraved on the side, it only makes sense to resist believing in Atlantis. Of course, this doesn't mean one shouldn't eagerly anticipate thrilling new archaeological treasures and clues to our past emerging from the depths in the coming years. I know I do.
GO DEEPER…
Ellis, Richard. Imagining Atlantis. New York: Vintage, 1999.
Feder, Kenneth L. Encyclopedia of Dubious Archaeology: From Atlantis to the Walam Olum. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2010.
Here is the reality. It has been estimated that in the last 50,000 years about 106 billion humans were born. Of the 100 billion people born before the 6 billion living today, every one of them has died and not one has returned to confirm for us beyond a reasonable doubt that there is life after death. This data set does not bode well for promises of immortality and claims for an afterlife.
—Michael Shermer
I'm an adult. I don't need heaven to motivate me to treat others well, nor do I need it to help me cope with the realization that I will die one day.
—Anonymous
“The Holy Spirit is here,” declared American evangelist Loretta Blasingame. “God spoke a word of knowledge to me right before I even stood up to speak to you. He said someone here has already been healed of cancer. Wonderful things are going to happen tonight. I just know it. God is in this place. Someone just had a tumor on their right side dissolved instantly.”1
Blasingame was addressing a small gathering of about one hundred believers in the Cayman Islands. After relaying “God's word” of a few more miraculous healings, she told a spectacular story. “I died of a heart attack. I was dead and rose out of my body. I actually saw it lying there from above the room.
“I went to heaven,” she explained. “First, I saw two beautiful gates fixed with pearls and diamonds. When they opened, I saw streets paved with gold. It was more beautiful than I could ever have imagined. I saw people eating fruit. But when they ate one piece, another one would appear. Nobody goes hungry in heaven. I even saw angels teaching a group of people how to worship. Maybe they had been saved [born again] on their deathbed, or something.
“Then I saw him,” Blasingame said. “Jesus walked up to me and took my hand. This was no dream. I saw him just as I see you people here tonight.”
Shrieks, prayers and moans rose from the audience. A woman near me begins speaking in tongues.
“His hair was parted in the middle and had beautiful waves,” Blasingame continued. “His beard was cut perfectly. And he had the most beautiful crystal blue eyes. He spoke to me, saying he would anoint me and send me back to Earth.”
With great drama Blasingame paused and stared intensely at the audience. There is absolute silence.
“I come against cancer, arthritis, back trouble!” she shouted. “Somebody has fluid on the lungs! You're healed! In the name of Jesus! Someone has female problems; you're healed!”
Several people surged forward so that Blasingame could “lay hands” on them. More shrieks, prayers, and crying filled the room. After being touched by the preacher, some believers collapsed into twitching heaps of contorted flesh. One woman told me later that she felt “electrical charges all over” when Blasingame touched her and she fell down. “I felt dizzy. When I was on the floor, I felt I was at total peace. I saw a part of Jesus reach down to me.”
“I knew she meant me when she said ‘somebody with female problems is healed,’” another woman told me. “When she spoke I felt God's power all over me. It was wonderful.”
A believer declares that it's “obviously true” that Blasingame has been to heaven. “How else could she have this power?” I can think of a few other explanations for her “power,” of course, but the story intrigues me nonetheless. Her conv
incing details about heaven were not really all that impressive, in my view. They seemed more like a list of clichés strung together. Even her description of Jesus felt lifeless for its lack of creativity. According to her, Jesus really does look like that classic “Head of Christ” portrait by Warner Sallman that has hung in millions of American living rooms since the 1940s. But who can say? Maybe Blasingame did visit heaven briefly after she “died.” The problem for skeptics, of course, is that she has no evidence. Her faith-healing claims are not good evidence because claims of supernatural healings have been a common feature of thousands of religions spanning thousands of years. If it did not confirm the gods and belief systems of all those pagan priests and prehistoric shamans, then it does not confirm hers either. In the end, all Blasingame has is a story. Maybe if she had returned from heaven with one of those magical self-replenishing fruit baskets to show us all, a strand of Jesus' hair for DNA analysis (maybe something extraordinary would turn up). Even a chunk of gold pavement forged in heaven might have been intriguing. But that's not fair to Blasingame. Who in their right mind would swipe souvenirs from heaven? What she could do, however, is allow her healing powers to be analyzed scientifically. A double-blind test by independent researchers would do the trick. Then we might know if there is something to her claim of having gone to heaven to get empowered by a god.
Never forget that anyone can say anything about anything. Science doesn't have much use for stories alone and science is by far the best method we have for figuring things out and making discoveries. Don't misunderstand me; storytelling is still great. We love a good story. We get thrills from telling a great story and we get thrills from hearing a great story. It's an important part of being human. Good educators know that one of the best ways to get students to remember something is to present it in the context of a story. When confronted with a weird, hard-to-believe tale, one should keep in mind that our species is prone to fantasy, vulnerable to vision and hearing glitches, and human memories just can't be trusted. Often we are just plain dishonest, too. All of this means that a bizarre story needs to be supported by very good evidence. Otherwise it's in the same league with Elvis sightings, alien abductions, and every ghost story ever told.
This is the problem we are faced with when people claim heaven is a real place. There is only the claim, the story, put forward by followers of some religions, with no evidence. There are also the tales told by some people who say they had visions of it or actually went there and returned. Again, no evidence means nothing but a story. We know that people can have psychological experiences that seem real to them but did not happen, and we know that people can lie. What we do not know is if a heaven exists. While one certainly can understand the attraction of such a place, it is difficult to understand why so many people would think it is real.
According to a 2007 survey, 81 percent of American adults believe in heaven and 8 percent are not sure. Only 11 percent of Americans do not believe heaven exists. I'm not sure why—perhaps it is a sign of American optimism—but fewer people (69 percent) believe in hell than in heaven.2 What does it really mean to “believe in heaven” anyway? I contend that this is all a bit more complex than it appears. My hunch is that for all the confident talk and pulpit pounding over it, heaven is more an emotional hope than a known destination in the minds of most believers. I feel this way because for every one person I have met who lectured me on the specifics of heaven as an exclusive club, I've met a hundred or so more who say their god would let all but the absolute worst of us into heaven—no matter who they are or even what religion they adhere to. Over the years I've observed that the notion of heaven is less divisive and more positive than most other aspects of religions. New research seems to support this. For example, the vast majority of Americans believe that good people who follow different religions can still go to heaven. This is fascinating because it seems to contradict directly the core claims of typical religions as well as the words of their leaders, many of whom are very clear about who will and will not go to heaven. The poll numbers, however, reveal a remarkable generosity of hope. Even a majority of normally rigid and by-the-book evangelical Protestants think that the gateway to heaven is wide enough for almost everyone—even non-Christians—to gain entry.3 Yes, in the minds of most believers, heaven appears to be more about neighborly love and near-limitless hope than a real destination defined by narrow, tribal theology. Now, if only we can find a way to direct all that post-death goodwill toward the Earth and the living, we might get somewhere.
GO DEEPER…
Boyer, Pascal. Religion Explained. New York: Basic Books, 2002.
Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. New York: Mariner Books, 2008.
Harris, Sam. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005.
Hitchens, Christopher, ed. The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever. New York: Da Capo Press, 2007.
The Bermuda Triangle is a manufactured mystery from start to finish.
—Terrence Hines, Pseudoscience and the Paranormal
The real mystery is how the Bermuda Triangle became a mystery.
—Robert Todd Carroll, The Skeptic's Dictionary
After growing up on the eastern coast of south Florida and then living twenty years of my adult life in the Caribbean, I know that the ocean can be as dangerous as it can be beautiful. Bad things often happen in the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea. People get lost. People vanish. People die. Incredibly powerful storms routinely wreak havoc in the seas and on coastal communities. Deadly creatures roam free and even currents just offshore sometimes kill weekend swimmers on sunny afternoons.
In 1992, I explored the rubble that was Homestead, Florida, and interviewed many of the newly homeless after category 5 Hurricane Andrew struck. I saw large boats stranded high and dry in fields far from the sea. I saw an eighteen-wheel truck left upside down by winds. In the Cayman Islands I watched a community mourn fishermen who went out to sea and were never heard from again. I've also seen waves taller than my house smash into land on a warm day with clear skies. It should be no surprise to anyone that things can and do go tragically wrong on the water. Not every ship and plane that travels over the ocean reaches its destinations as planned. If nothing unexpected and unfortunate ever happened out there, then we would have a real mystery.
During two decades spent swimming, snorkeling, diving, beachcombing, and working as a journalist in the Caribbean, I developed a heightened appreciation for how dangerous the ocean can be. Twice I even found myself in situations where I could have ended up a “missing at sea” statistic. While snorkeling one early morning just outside the reef along a lonely stretch of beach I had a face-to-face encounter with a seven-foot bull shark. It probably was attracted to the area by blood in the water from nearby spear fishermen and was only looking me over to see if I was towing a string of fish it could steal. I know that I'm more likely to be struck by lightning than eaten by a shark, but statistics offer little assurance when one is less than ten feet away from a shark and too far from shore for a quick escape. I felt virtually helpless—and was. Furthermore, watching National Geographic and Discovery Channel shark documentaries had not prepared me for the stunning size and power of this creature. Seven feet (an honest estimate, taking into account the way in which fear and water magnify objects) may not sound so big, but up close the shark seemed like a blue whale to me. Its rows of misaligned teeth, muscular bulk, and the way it sliced through the water sent me into a state of near panic. I have never had an irrational fear of sharks, but this was primal; my brain and my body went into full fight-or-flight mode. After a face-off that felt like forever and a brief game of peekaboo around a coral head, the shark surged away with a flick of its tail and faded into the deep. The encounter left me trembling and grateful to be alive.
On another occasion I ignored high winds and attempted a short but risky trip between two islands in a small inflatable boat. I grossly underestimated the strength of
both the winds and the currents and my little boat rapidly gained speed—toward the open sea. What was supposed to be a brief crossing turned into a serious threat to my life. I was very fit at the time but struggled to make progress against the elements. With each stroke I fought back panic, fully aware that I could end up lost at sea. Swimming for shore was an option, of course, but it would mean abandoning the boat and all the supplies in it. It would also be a very long and difficult swim. I dug deep and paddled for what seemed like eternity before finally reaching shore, where I flopped down on the sand, exhausted. Memories like these left me with no doubt about the ever-present dangers of the ocean. Twice, on a sunny day and in sight of shore, I might have ended up missing at sea, another mystery open to speculation.
The area known as the Bermuda Triangle is fully capable of swallowing up the occasional ship or plane without the aid of anything supernatural or paranormal. This is why I find the wild claims and stories of the Bermuda Triangle not just unproven, but unnecessary as well. The beautiful but indifferent ocean sometimes kills the unskilled, the unprepared, and the just plain unlucky. That's the reality. Yes, boats, planes, and people go missing in a vast area that has a large volume of traffic. What's unusual about that? Why in the world would anyone think an explanation involving magic, Atlantis, extraterrestrials, black holes, or interdimensional time shifts are required? But some people do. However, the Bermuda Triangle may be one of the safest places in the world. That is what the evidence suggests. It turns out that the accident rate is actually lower there than in surrounding areas! For this reason, skeptic and science historian Michael Shermer suggests it might make more sense to call the area the “Non-Bermuda Triangle.”1
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