charles camp
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Posted by: Ryan ®
03/17/2002, 02:21:53
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This showed  up in my E-mail today, and I've been thinking about it ever since.  Does anyone have additional information about Charles Camp, or can anyone confirm or deny this story?

I tried looking up information on the internet, but to no avail.  The searches just bring up information about Madalyn O'Hair and stuff like that. 

I hope someone is familiar with this--- perhaps Pat (the story reminds me of him, actually) or rpcman.  Any info would be appreciated.  Here's the story as it appeared in my E-mail:

 

             If we could glimpse the mind of God, the truth about some people's missions would absolutely amaze us. For years a renowned scientist named Charles Camp debated religious leaders on the radio. He advocated the facts of science as opposed to the concepts of Creationism. Over the years he lost faith in God and became known as an outspoken and articulate atheist. Then, as he lay dying in a hospital, all that changed. He discovered the beauty and intricacy of God's plan for him. He was astounded that—despite his atheism—God had been using him all along for His loving purposes. Here, Charles Camp's widow, Joanna Camp, shares the story:
Dear Mrs. Eadie:
My husband died in 1975. Before his actual death, his doctors pronounced him dead three times. They were astonished to witness his return to life each time with a clear mind and filled with energy, even though he was dying of terminal cancer and old age. At the hospital, the nurses began to call him among themselves "the man who wouldn't die." All this is recorded in the hospital records.
During the times he was dead, my husband experienced things, some of which were exactly as you wrote about in your book.
Charles was a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and was written up as the "father of paleontology." For years he taught medical students. When the subject of near-death experiences would come up in class, Charles would explain that there is no life beyond the grave, that everything ends there, that the body gradually changes to become nourishment for other forms of life. The experience of going through a dark tunnel to see "God" at the end as a bright light was just an illusion. For when the body is undergoing the hard stress of dying, he said, certain chemical reactions are triggered in the brain, and this is nature's way of providing ease from the stress, nothing more. So imagine his great surprise when he found himself separated from his physical body at the hospital. He told me that he began to analyze everything carefully, taking nothing for granted. But soon he had to admit to himself, that this was certainly not an illusion. He'd never felt more alive! All of his many senses seemed to surface, to come alive in him, he said.
Next he found himself in the dark tunnel, before the bright light and God! God received him with the same unconditional love that you experienced, Mrs. Eadie. He said his entire body vibrated with God's wonderful love. From head to toe, God's love flooded him, and once you have experienced God's love, he said, you'll want to remain forever by his side, never to be far from his love ever again. He learned that though he had not believed in God on earth, God believed in him! God had loved him tremendously, since the very beginning.
Charles had been an atheist on earth, but he was not a person who fought good, nor was he against humanity. He was known for his genuine humility, gentleness of spirit and his great love for people. His goal in life had been to aid humanity in any way possible, to help mankind evolve and get on the right path mentally. He dedicated his life to help remove some of the ugly racial and religious prejudices. For seventeen years Charles was a spokesman for the university and a radio debater. His job was to deal with the radical preachers who were constantly challenging the science departments of the nations' universities, demanding that they shut down or teach science only according to the Bible—or according to their own interpretations of it.
Charles was well prepared for this. He had studied the Bible for many years in the original languages. He said his aim was to make the church leaders realize how far they had strayed from the true master that they claimed to follow: Jesus Christ. Charles soon gained great fame for this, but because of the dark works found in the Christian churches then, he turned further and further away from the Bible—and he eventually wanted no part of the God that these churches followed.
Then, when he died and stood before God's bright light in heaven, he learned this had been his major mission on earth—to debate with religious leaders who were taking the world into a dark path. He learned that the only way he could do this was as a scientist! He was reminded that Jesus Christ came to earth to chastise the religious leaders of his time, who were also leading their people in the wrong path.
Who would ever have believed that Berkeley's famous atheist would be the person to teach me about God! And who would have believed I would look deeply into the eyes of an atheist to see the spirit of Christ in those eyes! Life has never ceased to amaze me.
It can take a lifetime of following our own hearts before learning that we've indeed been doing what God sent us to do in the first place. Charles Camp reminds me of Saul in the Bible. What passionate men! They knew what they believed, and they taught it with all their hearts. God can especially use people who throw themselves passionately into what they love, who walk forward confidantly committed to a cause.
 
Our life is like a river. The destination is set, but the method of our journeying is up to us. We can cruise down the middle of the river at top speed, or we can hug the shore and spin around in eddies. We can crash over rapids or chart a safer path between obstacles. We can slum along the bottom in the mire and slime of sediment, or we can glide along the sparkling surface where the air is clean. The river is ours from birth to death. How we'll navigate it is determined by the hundreds of small choices we make each day.




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Re: charles camp, classic glurge?
Re: charles camp -- Ryan Top of thread Archive
Posted by: Martin ®
03/17/2002, 05:00:40
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Dear Ryan,


I'm glad you didn't accept the contents of that email as factual. It strikes me very much as a classic "glurge".


Here's the definition at the famous urban legend site, snopes.com:

What is a glurge? Think of it as chicken soup with several cups of sugar mixed in: It's supposed to be a method of delivering a remedy for what ails you by adding sweetening to make the cure more appealing, but the result is more often a sickly-sweet concoction that induces hyperglycemic fits.


Note that the words in your email are NOT Camp's, but obstensibly his wife's. Some spouses do tend to lie about this kind of thing after their mates die. That's the same general sort of lie they told about Charles Darwin! It is especially unlikely to be accurate in this case, since it is quite clear that the Mrs. Camp is a rather far-along born-again.



But the fact that Camp himself never reported his views publicly suggests he didn't actually hold the opinions claimed by his wife.  For if he did, he would have tried to share it with the world.


Also, NDEs are quite well known for turning many previously intelligent and rational people into very irrational and credulous believers, someimes into one of the hundreds of Christian varieties, sometimes converting them into Muslims, sometimes into Taoists, sometimes into die-hard believers in extraterrestrials, sometimes into satanists, etc.  But since NDEs have been manufactured artificially in the lab, there are no valid grounds for believing that NDEs yield any real insight into the "divine" or any other transcendent sphere.


Also, palentologists are no more knowledgeable about neuorology and neurobiology and related specialties than most people, and are therefore just as likely to credit their purely physiological brain states associated with NDEs to superstitious nonsense as most anyone else.


Furthermore, you can see from the alleged letter, Mrs. Camp says her husband was an "athiest on Earth", which makes it quite clear that Charles Camp did NOT disavow his atheism!  The very bizarrely phrased letter suggests that the Mrs.' faith in her husband's miraculous theism was somehow miraculously "revealed" to her (via Ouija Board, perhaps?)


You CLEARLY read FAR too much into that non-credible glurge than was actually there, Ryan!  You wrote: "It can take a lifetime of following our own hearts before learning that we've indeed been doing what God sent us to do in the first place."


I hope you are self-honest enough to realize that not even the letter gives any credible reason for believing what you wrote!


You go on to say: "Charles Camp reminds me of Saul in the Bible."


You mean the man who never claimed (and probably never believed) that Jesus ever walked this Earth as a physical being?  That probably considered the idea of a physical deity -- like the other men and women of his milieu -- utterly disgusting and blasphemous?


You continue: "What passionate men! They knew what they believed, and they taught it with all their hearts."


Paul believed in a purely trascendent, supernatural Jesus that never came to Earth in the guise of a man.  He would have been quite disgusted by the LDS faith!


You say, very poetically: "Our life is like a river."


To the extent that is a valid metaphor, the river seems to have swept you away, my friend!


 


- Martin


 

p.s.: These new "features" for posting are very annoying, aren't they?

Modified by Martin at Sun, Mar 17, 2002, 05:02:12


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Not my words
Re: Re: charles camp, classic glurge? -- Martin Top of thread Archive
Posted by: Ryan ®
03/17/2002, 22:05:13
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Martin,


I didn't write those words you responded to, they were part of the E-mail.


I'm only trying to make sense of it all. 


I thank you for your input and perspective!  As always, they are most helpful. 


your friend,


Ryan


 


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Re: charles camp
Re: charles camp -- Ryan Top of thread Archive
Posted by: Gunnar ®
03/18/2002, 00:31:53
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I too take the story with a very large grain of salt.  As Martin mentioned, it seems very reminiscent of the the account of Mrs. Darwin's attempt to edit out any trace of her deceased husband's agnosticism from his memoirs, against his wishes, before having them published.  Fortunately, his original, unedited memoirs were later discovered.  It would be useful and interesting if someone could trace back the story to its original source to ascertain its veracity.  Even if he had NDEs just before he finally died, I agree that it would not prove what the story purports to prove.


If there truly is a wise and loving God and an afterlife, though, it makes a great deal of sense to me that God would judge us on how we comported ourselves and treated others during our mortal existence rather than on what we believed about Him, or even whether we believed in Him at all, as the story claims.


Gunnar


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The agnostic's creed
Re: Re: charles camp -- Gunnar Top of thread Archive
Posted by: Christopher ®
03/18/2002, 14:40:53
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Gunnar writes,


"If there truly is a wise and loving God and an afterlife, though, it makes a great deal of sense to me that God would judge us on how we comported ourselves and treated others during our mortal existence rather than on what we believed about Him, or even whether we believed in Him at all, as the story claims."


The world starves for this liberating view.  When I was young I helped a small lizard who was hopelessly tangled in a spider's web.  After carefully de-webbing the fellow, I placed it on a leaf, and off it scampered without so much as a look at its savior.  I have to confess it hurt a little not to see at least a remote sign of gratitude, of recognition that I was "a good guy."  I had just saved it from having a belly full of baby spiders!  How strange to imagine that God has the same petty need to be recognized by us.


I know, it's a pretty flimsy analogy.  By the way, since saving that lizard I've been in quite a few scrapes and not once did an army of lizards, led by my little friend, come to my rescue.  Movies lie.


Chris


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