The Empirical View Of The Film Heaven Is For Real

Heaven is for Real is a motion picture based upon a paranormal religious experience of a young boy from Imperial, Nebraska by the name of Colton Burpo. Colton is the son of a church leader who also doubles as a wrestling coach for the local Wesleyan High School as well as a volunteer fire fighter. Even with these three jobs, the Burpo family were facing financial difficulties. Colton and his sister Cassie have spent all of their young lives in the church and one can assume that they have learned and heard throughout the years, several things about the Bible and the people of the time period. Although the family were carrying heavy financial burdens, Todd's wife Sonja insists on taking a family trip to Denver to sort of get way from the issues

First, Colton grew up in church. One can assume he has heard tales of miracles and experiences of Heaven and Jesus. He has possibly seen multiples of images depicting Heaven and Christian deities. Locke would be both rational and skeptical when dealing with this story and state that all knowledge comes from sensory experience. So perhaps in his surgery, Colton experienced the things he heard about and maybe have forgotten about. The effects of the medication and sedatives during the surgery could very well have unlocked a portion of Colton’s memory from early childhood. After all, what happens to our memories as small children and babies? They don’t just disappear as we may believe. They have to be stored somewhere in our brain and given the right environment they could possibly be unlocked. There are those among us who have what is known as Eidetic Memory, meaning the remember every experience and every day starting at a certain point to the present. It is very possible that in his early life his parents may have discussed the unfortunate miscarriage, or perhaps Colton may have been told from someone else or overheard it being discussed somewhere. When in a sedated state all of those memories could have been brought back to the forefront of his mind. This is not an essay to discredit everything that Colton claim to have experienced. In the contrary it is just a list of the possible things that could have led to his experience. Locke tells us that one must be rational in thinking. He is accompanied in this thought by Spinoza, Decartes, and Liebniz. If I were to be rational in breaking down this movie by saying that the heavenly occurrence Colton has claimed to have could be explained by his past sensory experiences. In describing what he saw, Colton only gave the expected answers one might