Life, The Universe, And Everything

[Grandpa Harley]

For all those people who were 'saved by GAWD!' on Sept 11 2001

 

 

God was too busy to save the guy putting out breakfasts in the restaurant...

 

"reached out my hand, and touched the face of god..."

[HuaiDan]

I've heard experiences like that can result from eating certain mushrooms. Not that I've ever tried it or anything....

[Grandpa Harley]

The Revelation of St. John the Divine... mushrooms all the way!

[Ouroboros]

Jesus is 'shroms.

[Grandpa Harley]

Why choose the lesser evil fictional deity?

 

 

[freeman]

Buddy,

I'll have to second Hans on the fact that you dismiss others who have similar, if not more convincing experiences, which strengthen their faith in their god! What makes your experience soooo unique that you could dismiss others, yet think that others should be more execpting of yours!

 

And then Grandpa Harley made the point that your god picked and choose those to die on Sept 11th.

 

 

PS I always had my shrooms with koolaid

[freeman]

Buddy,

I'll have to second Hans on the fact that you dismiss others who have similar, if not more convincing experiences, which strengthen their faith in their god! What makes your experience soooo unique that you could dismiss others, yet think that others should be more accepting of yours!

 

 

Bourbon Effect

[webmdave]

Well, Buddy, thanks for a partial answer.

 

Assuming I am not interested in the "rest of the story" is insulting, but whatever.

 

The second "angel" still remains without description, but I give up -- I'm not going to BEG you. You obviously are embarrassed by the experience. (Feel insulted?)

 

 

Anyway, no one on this planet can claim to be absolutely rational at all times. Further, no one can claim to have perfect senses that never misinterpret what is seen, heard, felt, smelled, or touched.

 

You believe you've seen angels, but other than a sincere "feeling" that you got it right, you have nothing else to show for it. I've read a shitload of UFO stories that are every bit as sincere sounding as yours. There is no evidence of little green (or silver or gold or...) men visiting our planet, and there is no evidence that your magical "creatures" exist either.

 

The Chief Justice just had an epileptic seizure. Does that mean the Chief Justice is nuts? Your little episodes don't indicate you have lost your ability to think straight, but I am convinced that your experience is nothing more than a mental aberration of some sort. Perhaps a bit of potato? Remember, Scrooge was just pretend.

[Grandpa Harley]

There was also that Filipino judge who discussed cases with elves...

[Ouroboros]

It's a strange position, "I see things that don't exist, therefore science got things wrong." Without thinking that maybe science can explain why we "see" things...

[BuddyFerris]

You know, when I was Christian (for over 30 years), I wanted to experience some miracle or any kind of vision. I sought after it, and I wanted it so badly. Later we had a terrible accident in my family, and my wife and kids got hurt. For years I wanted a miracle, but I slowly gave up on it. Eventually I just wanted anything that would keep my faith alive, a sign, a word, a feeling, a strengthening in my faith, and I prayed for it, but I never got anything.

 

Could it be that God plays favorites? Some he give miracles or visions freely, to others they spend their whole life seeking it, and never getting it? Don't you think it does make sense to conclude that a statue is "dead" to you, when you year after year talk to it and it never moves and it never responds? Why should I, or anyone else, be expected to believe in a lifeless doll on the floor, only because someone say we should do so in faith?

 

I think that it is extraordinary that you get a vision like that, but I'm certain that you would of course willingly admit that I very easily can ascribe your event to a mere psychological phenomenon rather than a miraculous event. Wouldn't you? Especially if you consider people getting similar vision in other religions and it supports their faith just as much as this vision supports yours.

 

Dear HanS,

Could it be that God plays favorites? I don't think so, although I'm sure he treats us each differently. I don't have a lot of answers; I wouldn't want to insult this crowd with anything trite. Interestingly my wife, whom I consider much more spiritually astute than I, has never had a similar experience. Visions (and dreams) are not something about which I can claim any great knowledge. I'm pretty sure the two events I've referred to were visual/vision/perception things, as though briefly seeing something in 3D from inside a 2D world. Based on the audible portion of the first, I'm inclined toward both being non-human, sentient creatures. Calling them angels fits in both cases.

 

You may, of course, relegate my experience to mental aberration. I was somewhat inclined to do the same for awhile, and decided rather to shelve the issue and see if subsequent events added to or detracted from my interpretation of it. It's not the sort of thing on which you'd want to base any life decisions. We have adequate historical records of stupid responses to such things ending in tragedy.

 

Since you mentioned your family, I'll tell you about the second event that brings my family in; it's just over a year since it happened. I'll have to edit this a bit, since it's mostly my daughter's story, and much of it isn't mine to tell. The kid is in her late 20's, master's degree in ed., chose deliberately to go to the inner city to teach in the city's most violent schools. She explained that if she didn't do it, nobody else would give a damn about those kids either. Makes an impressive story, but she's just a normal kid trying to do stuff that matters, not particularly drawn to wealth or prestige. We'd had our times, some maybe like yours; accidents, illnesses, injuries, disappointments, many with broken-hearted prayer for some way out. I don't recall any miraculous help being particularly visible. So the kid is in the inner city school, has been assaulted by students a couple of times (they are bigger than she is), ignored or blamed by the kids parents, left without help by the school's principal and staff because they're in no better shape, all the promises by the school board and the principal to help and resource her efforts are broken, every day becomes a survival challenge. She calls regularly, asking us to pray. Finally, things at the school fall apart; she discovers the school is paying a full-time assistant to be in her class who hasn't actually been in the class in six months. She inadvertently lets slip during a performance review that she didn't know she had any help assigned to her. The malingering assistant turns out to be the principal's sister. Now the kid is in trouble on every front; the principal is hounding her to retract her statement in writing, threatening discipline; the students continue threaten her and abuse her; the staff and union rep are missing in action; no friends on staff, she's the only white teacher in the school; it's hell in the workplace. She calls that morning before school and asks us to pray, so we do, my wife and I, just like a hundred other mornings when we pray over the kid. This time, as I open my mouth to pray, I find myself saying, "God, it's time to unveil the warrior angels." An odd turn of phrase, not something I've ever said or heard before, as far as I know, but as I speak the words, I see a covering being lifted like the unveiling of a statue when the sheet is lifted from the top. Becoming visible from the bottom up is a fairly simple column of fire, dense and multi-shades of red and orange, kind of like some artist's impression of fire but made out of something solid. As I watch, I realize my eyes are closed but it doesn't shut off what I see; the veil lifts about a third of the way and I am lost in blind terror. I can't force myself to stay and watch; I physically jerk myself out of whatever place that was. The story so far is unimpressive, but within the next few hours, the kid's circumstances are reversed. Mid-morning, the principal announces on the PA, Ms._________, come to the principal's office and bring your retraction letter with you. Within seconds, other teachers have come to the kid's classroom, gathered around her like a guard troop, and begin to escort her from the building. The union rep shows up and advises her to leave the building while he handles things, somebody takes over her class for the rest of the day, and as they're putting her in her car, one staffer says to her, "there are demons in that place, but you'll be ok." The principal and her malingering sister are history now, the kid has friends among the other teachers who later applauded her for standing up to the bully, she had a successful school year, and in some ways, it all hinged on what happened that one day.

 

Is life easy now? Nope. Does the kid still call for prayer? Yep. "Dad, you've got to pray, and it has to work." We pray. Have there been any other such 'miraculous' answers to prayer? Nothing like that has happened again, as far as I know. Am I special because I saw the frightening thing? Not as far as I can tell. What did I see? Who knows; I'm inclined toward non-human, sentient, and potentially violent. It was terrifying to look at; I had the impression of a second such in the background, waiting to be unveiled, whatever that means. Where were these helpers the first thousand times I prayed? No idea. Have there been long stretches of what looks like destructive struggle? Yep. Most will write this off as another fuzzy story with no evidence of anything in it. Does it persuade me of anything, or persuade you, for that matter? Of course not. Is it consistent with the flow of events, with the general tenants of scripture? Sure. Easily dismissed? Not by me or by the kid; to anybody else, it's someone else's story and easily set aside.

 

Do I believe in miracles? Probably. What do you do with a story like that. It isn't offered as persuasion.

Buddy

[HuaiDan]

PS I always had my shrooms with koolaid wicked.gif

 

I preferred mine with peanut butter.

 

d'oh! Stupid contradictions.

[dano]

Buddy,

Maybe it was Satan, (your vision at the Christian gathering), telling you that he was your friend, because you play so fast and loose with what the bible teaches.

 

When I, a poor humble seeker of the truth, tries to get you to expand on your basic interpretation of the Bible, you dismiss me every time with some curt, one or two word phrase, which to me says "it doesn't matter what I believe",

 

...but you are willing to write whole paragraphs about, what seems to me as an optical illusion, having nothing to do with the basic concepts and premises of Christianity contained in the bible.

 

All I'm trying to do is get you to take one of the more illogical concepts like "THE RANSOM", and explain how it makes sense to you, a reasonable man

 

The whole "angel thing", if you use "Occam's razor," can be resolved with,

 

One: Did they take a collection at the end of the service?

 

And Two: Was some charismatic Christian televangelist the central personality at the gathering?

 

And Three: Then it was more than likely a scam that they were working on and just hadn't got it perfected yet so that more than a few people would see it.

 

Dan, Agnostic

[dano]

Buddy,

Now your second story has something to work with.

 

You believe in prayer. Why?

You have spread the Christian virus to others. Do you not feel guilty about this?

 

That's what I'm talking about!

Dan, Agnostic

[Grandpa Harley]

It could well be what I call the 'Rorschach Ink blot Test' version of faith. Back when we had problems with camouflaged predators the ability to abstract a patterns from a meaningless collections of colours, light and dark was useful... Unfortunately, it means we see patterns in noise all the damned time, and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. To quote the idea postulated by Alan Moore, we fear the random. It doesn't matter what the horror (or the glory) is you see in the ink blot, it still is fleeing from the reality of the situation... it's meaningless ink on paper. And that is true horror. We can't fight it, we can't flee it, we can't surrender to it... It's the thunderstorm or the avalanche... it's random and meaning less...

 

We can invoke Flatland scenarios, aliens, angels, Gods, or anything else... if one has a predisposition to the view that seraphim worship god and Jesus is real, then the noise will look like that... Someone else will see something else... and both will collect other seemingly connected events to support their vision... I'm not positing dishonesty here, I'm saying that all all anyone can say is 'this is the pattern I saw' To see the face of Jesus in a blood splatter is a case in point... some call it a 'miracle' when really its the accident of medium velocity spatter as someone had their head stoved in with one of Slazenger's finest... In the end, it's more down to sensory filtering than objective experience. The arrogance comes in when one says that some random God (which is always the one true god) chose one to save, when the guy in the next seat became mincemeat. The idea of a 'plan' is subjective, and to say 'Gawd saved me because he has a plan for me' belittles the deaths of anyone else in the same pit... thus back to the falling man. If God can save one, he could save all, but he didn't... and that can only be that god plays favourites... God could only have hated the falling man in my picture... since, allegedly, he saved so many others... and that ain't a god worth following.

[webmdave]

Buddy, there have been mystics telling about their visions for centuries... make that millennia.

 

What are we to do with sincere, honest people who have emphatically written about appearances of Mary, visions of demons, personal encounters with Jesus, hearing voices, seeing lights, etc., etc., etc.?

 

 

Michael Shermer travels to Laurentian University in Sudbury, Canada, to strap on the "God Helmet" in neuroscientist Michael Persinger's lab that duplicates out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, alien abductions, and other paranormal phenomena.

 

 

 

Also for your consideration: Conversion, Spiritual Epiphanies and Mystical Experiences & Is that you, God?

[freeman]

Buddy,Whenever I hear about some tragedy involving little kids, somehow my mind will insert my two daughters into that situation. Very vivid in detail as if I am actually seeing it happen. I must shake myself from these horrible images to get back to reality. I do not know why these images occur. Maybe it is a subconscious effort to play out scenarios to see how I would react and maybe change the outcome.

 

There are many psychological explanations for the timing of your last “visitor” including the all-powerful coincidence.

 

I still want to know what makes you think your gawd is the right one, given the reinforcement of your beliefs due to your “visions”. How is it that a Hindu is given visions, which reinforce his belief system and you can so easily dismiss their claims as not “real”?

[freeman]

Growing up catholic, this is the only point I have agreed with them one and I am thrilled that my catholic parents have always supported evolution!

 

It is about time Pope Benedict (Mr. Nazi) came around on this one!

[freeman]

Sorry, click on evolution to story!

[Ouroboros]

Since you mentioned your family, I'll tell you about the second event that brings my family in; it's just over a year since it happened. I'll have to edit this a bit, since it's mostly my daughter's story, and much of it isn't mine to tell. The kid is in her late 20's, master's degree in ed., chose deliberately to go to the inner city to teach in the city's most violent schools. She explained that if she didn't do it, nobody else would give a ... (snip) ... day.

So, are you sure your visions came from God, and not from Zeus or Thor or the Cute Bunny?

 

Here's a challenge for you: lets say this world is a very complex and entangled structure, where even the future already happened, and we can have memories of the future. Nothing will happen that not already is set in stone to happen, and sometimes, some brains are wired to tap into the future events... now that system would work without God giving anyone visions. It would be an automatic system, without a supreme being, that still would account for your experience. So tell me, what can you provide as argument that it is not the way I just said? Only your belief, right? Well, I don't believe it, so that's a impasse. We can't go further, because all you can claim is that you have tendency to schizophrenia and you believe it's a gift from God. I mean, nothing of what you say points to the Christian God at all, but rather to a medical condition or any mysticism or spiritualism out there. Maybe New Age is the true path, they believe in visions too... don't they? Maybe when you pray, you open your spiritual channels to see the future, and it's based on some meta-physical laws rather than a personal deity. Come on... use your brain.

 

And again, if God did exist, and he was responsible for your visions, then he plays favorites, since I know hundreds of people that never (in their whole life) got one single vision. (Maybe because the chemical balance in their brain was stable?)

 

Is life easy now? ...(snip) ...

Do I believe in miracles? Probably. What do you do with a story like that. It isn't offered as persuasion.

Buddy

I can see that you at least have some open mind to other possibilities, and that is great. You admit there could be other explanations, even though you think it's rather your God that's involved. But how do you know?

 

To continue on my earlier escapade above, lets say there are green aliens in flying saucers. Lets say they have a technology to imprint images into our brains and even control flow of events. How do you know that you're not being played a fool right now? How do you know there isn't some green men in a spaceship, laughing at the little game they played you? And they're showing the whole charade on galactic TV, and it's called *punked* (in some extraterrestrial language).

 

Or, God exists, and he playes favorites. Some he neglect and ignore, and some he give visions and miracles.

[Grandpa Harley]

"And they're showing the whole charade on galactic TV, and it's called *punked* (in some extraterrestrial language)."

 

Damn! I bet the cattle mutilations were from their 'Jackass'

[BuddyFerris]

God could only have hated the falling man in my picture... since, allegedly, he saved so many others... and that ain't a god worth following.

Dear Grandpa H,

Is the above quote sarcasm or a genuine criticism?

Buddy

[BuddyFerris]

I still want to know what makes you think your gawd is the right one, given the reinforcement of your beliefs due to your “visions”. How is it that a Hindu is given visions, which reinforce his belief system and you can so easily dismiss their claims as not “real”?

Dear Freeman,

I'll assume your question is genuine; correct me if I'm addressing something of no consequence to you. So then, whom have I dismissed?

Have I missed something? Does Christianity require me to consider knowledge to be exclusively the property of the 'members'?

 

I grew up in Texas and attended a Southern Baptist church; I had the impression that we were supposed to believe we were 'the only ones going to heaven' or something like that. I seem to remember my dad explaining that it didn't work like that; he was an uncharacteristically broad-minded fellow for a Texan . It's been decades since I've heard anyone suggest such a narrow and exclusive view. Without kicking off a debate about the scriptures, let me just point out that the first priest mentioned wasn't even Jewish. This guy (Melchizedek) appears out of nowhere, is introduced as a priest of God, and Abraham affirms that status; so does the new testament. So what does that do to the exclusivity question? Here is a priesthood, and apparently some group of folks needing a priest, who are correctly following God, and their story gets zip in the scriptures. Looks to me like God has just affirmed a group as legit, correct, and on the right track, and he deliberately told us nothing about them. There's a fair chance they weren't Baptists. Or Christians.

 

I'll grant you that I'm persuaded to a fairly simple theology, the details of which will be familiar to anyone who has spent time on the basics. I'll not, however, suggest that God can't (or won't) show truth to a Muslim seeker, a Hindu devout, or anyone else; finding God isn't a contest. When I meet someone who I think is too far off base for truth to reach, well, then we'll see how my theology works out.

 

Buddy

[Grandpa Harley]

God could only have hated the falling man in my picture... since, allegedly, he saved so many others... and that ain't a god worth following.

Dear Grandpa H,

Is the above quote sarcasm or a genuine criticism?

Buddy

 

If God as described exists, genuine criticism... unless you know why God hates black restaurant workers and I missed that bit in the NT

 

BTW, your disingenuous crap really doesn't wash... I just want to see what you have to justify random miracles... maybe the guy needed to die...

[Ouroboros]

I grew up in Texas and attended a Southern Baptist church; I had the impression that we were supposed to believe we were 'the only ones going to heaven' or something like that. I seem to remember my dad explaining that it didn't work like that; he was an uncharacteristically broad-minded fellow for a Texan . It's been decades since I've heard anyone suggest such a narrow and exclusive view. Without kicking off a debate about the scriptures, let me just point out that the first priest mentioned wasn't even Jewish. This guy (Melchizedek) appears out of nowhere, is introduced as a priest of God, and Abraham affirms that status; so does the new testament. So what does that do to the exclusivity question? Here is a priesthood, and apparently some group of folks needing a priest, who are correctly following God, and their story gets zip in the scriptures. Looks to me like God has just affirmed a group as legit, correct, and on the right track, and he deliberately told us nothing about them. There's a fair chance they weren't Baptists. Or Christians.

 

I'll grant you that I'm persuaded to a fairly simple theology, the details of which will be familiar to anyone who has spent time on the basics. I'll not, however, suggest that God can't (or won't) show truth to a Muslim seeker, a Hindu devout, or anyone else; finding God isn't a contest. When I meet someone who I think is too far off base for truth to reach, well, then we'll see how my theology works out.

Which truth is it that God could show a Muslim seeker or Hindu devoutee? If you're answer is "Jesus son of God", then I might ask if you really know if Melchizedek really "knew" that? So if that's not it, then what "truth" does everyone have to "see"? If you're so open minded about Christianity in general, why can't you be the same for humanity? Why does someone even have to believe in God or Jehovah, but not Allah, to go to Heaven? Do you think God (if he exists) even requires belief to let someone in? And why does he has to punish people for eternnity for questioning why reality (the real world that God supposedly created and is unchangable) contradicts faith (which is totally subjective to who is the carrier of said faith)? Why does most religions demand belief in their particular religion to get whatever "salvation" they sell? To me, it's just snake-oil salesman tricks, the peddler who walks door-to-door and have the miracle cure from baldness to toenail-fungus...

 

And Gramps got a point. If God does exist, then he can withstand criticism and analyzis. If God does not exist, and it's only based on delusion, then questioning the "faith" is very dangerous. Hence, Christianity and other cults demand obediance and no-questions-asked policy.