Many years ago, when I was still skeptical of my father's skepticism concerning books ("Don't believe everything you read son" he said, which I merely attributed to his being a non-reader), I read that your afterlife is whatever you think it will be. In other words those who believe they'll go to a blissful Heaven will go to a blissful Heaven. Those who believe they'll be reincarnated as slugs will be reincarnated as slugs. Those with a fetish for Purgatory will be purged. In other words, God will fulfil your expectations of truth, although "God" in that sense is too personal. He's not into decision-making; that doesn't have that 'elegant simplicity' to it, so rather you will go where you want to go as designed by that "Force" or "Power" of the universe.
This is Relativism run amuck but a perfectly modern heresy. It's probably an outgrowth of learning so much about the power of our own brains. From nature to nuture - from John Derbyshire to Norman Vincent Peale - we've learned how extraordinary the brain's influence is upon us and thus have begun to raise it to the level of a deity. Man will worship and attribute supernatural powers to that which heavily influences his natural life as was done with the sun in ancient times. Given this, Terri Schiavo didn't have a chance.
The cumulative impact of science, including much junk science, can't be neglected. It's said that cancer doctors are more likely to get cancer because they think about it all the time (i.e. you are what you think). And was it Heisenberg who wrote that observation alone (i.e. sentience; brain function) can change an outcome? Derbyshire believes everything is heritable including the "National Review" gene, identified by the geno project as meaning you'll be likely to read NR. (Ok I jest. But slightly.)
The Judeo-Christian revelation is exactly the opposite of the what the world tells us. That God is personal. That God loves us. That God judges us. And that He rescues us from 'outside the system'. The idea of rescue is especially foreign to those who believe in the deity of the Brain since they look over the vast sum of history and imagine the only moments of salvation were scientific in nature. They see only the ameliorative interventions of science ('...and then the cause of cholera was discovered...') not the interventions of God. They see only the material, not the spiritual. And whenever we choose to sin we too are sharing in that heresy.
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