6 Science and the End of Heaven’s Gate

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the era between the death of Bonnie Lu Nettles and the mass suicide that ended the Heaven's Gate's existence. It analyzes the shifts in the group's naturalistic approach engendered by the loss of Nettles, whose death resulted in a moment of cognitive dissonance for the group. The group had hitherto insisted that its members would enter the heavens in their current living bodies, something that failed to occur for Nettles. Applewhite and the other members of the group therefore shifted toward a more supernatural or nonmaterial interpretation of bodily salvation predicated on the transmigration of the souls, a clear break from Heaven's Gate's earlier position. Overall, however, the movement continued to attempt during this time to recast religious concepts in the languages of materialistic naturalism. Several sources from the 1980s and 1990s revealed the continuing emphasis on the incorporation of scientific language and the methodological foundations of science into the movement. The chapter also considers sources from this latter period of Heaven's Gate that began to assume a vocally anti-religious perspective. These sources indicate how the group attempted to situate itself as more scientific than religious, despite making claims about salvation, God, and the nature of human life that most observers would consider religious by nature. Finally, it considers the material produced in the final years of the group's history by the adherents of Heaven's Gate, especially the three longtime members of the group calling themselves Jnnody, Chkody, and Jwnody. The chapter ends with an analysis of how the group's view of science and the absorption of scientific approaches into religion led to the 1997 mass suicides that ended Heaven's Gate.