God, Aliens, and Other Stuff

Psalm 1 says, "Happy is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and in His law he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither; and in whatever he does, he prospers (NRSV). A poetic metaphor, of course. But what does it really mean? That nothing bad will ever happen to a God-centered person? Of course not. We all know that such people can have car accidents, develop cancer, lose their homes, lose a child, wind up divorced, or become depressed and angry. Goodness knows Israel and every major hero and heroine in the Hebrew Bible had crosses to bear and trials to overcome. So what point was the author of the psalm making with such confidence? The water represents God's presence in our lives... an otherworldly energy that brings them through all tests and trial...

One more year of college for son Ben. His girlfriend has already graduated and gotten her first job. Son Chris has one more year of classwork in his Ph.D. program. After that he prepares for his comps and outlines his dissertation. So next summer will be a time fraught with life-changing decisions and commitments for those 3 young adults. It reminds me a little of my own story when I was in Kentucky sometime in late 1980. I had a wonderful job as a Geologic Draftsperson for the Kentucky Geological Survey, located on the U.K. campus in Lexington, KY. I loved what I did, where I worked, and who I worked with. The problem was that I was listed as a Teacher's Aid and I made the same salary. I was grindingly poor. Life was like quick sand. Pull one foot out and the other sinks. I lived with a cat named Mugsy in a small trailer in a trailer park. The park had its own ambiance which wasn't entirely unpleasant, but I could barely afford to feed the two of us and keep the trailer is bas...

It may not be fire, but it has been graphically described by several authors who have stumbled onto different versions of it. Dr. Frank Ritchie and Angie Fenimore began as nonbelievers but ended as devout Christians because of what they saw in Otherworld. Robert A. Monroe and Rosalind McKnight practiced decades of out of body experiments with no particular religious orientation. They did not encounter God or Jesus Christ, but they did describe many a miserable, lost, and benighted spirit. Monroe was occasionally accosted by spooky, sexual entities who tried to seduce him into an erotic encounter. Monroe describes the fate of two of his close intellectual friends and that of his father, none of whom were in a peaceful heavenly situation. One of them came up to greet him through a hole in the floor of some Otherworld room. He appeared as a gaseous cloud. As he began to address Monroe, guiding hands interrupted the interview and led Monroe away. Monroe's description of angry, desperat...

A sophistry is something that looks good, feels good, and sounds really good...so good that it becomes an absolute truth for long periods of time, deeply impacting culture, before people realize that it's just wrong and they have to let the idea go. A sophistry stops all progress until it is exposed. One example in our own history in the U.S. is that black people are not fully human, so it's OK to buy and sell them on the open market. One of the biggest sophistries in the world today is promoted by the global Christian church. It is the evangelical belief that the Bible is inerrant, that there is no error in the Scripture, that all ideas expressed are those of God Himself. The belief that there can be no human content or cultural bias in the writing of the Bible is just wrong. To continually aver that the Bible is perfect, inerrant, and always reflects God's current view of the world sounds so good, so pious, so holy, so heroic...and is always rewarded with amens and "...

Clairvoyant remote viewing is a program initiated by psychic Ingo Swann in the 1970s in Menlo Park at the Stanford Research Institute. In the mid-1990s, it spread to Ft. Meade Army Base in Fort Meade, Maryland, where a small number of viewers worked in mostly in secret for the military. The program has always been controversial. Debunkers and religious people who were suspicious of all psychic activity kept the program aficionados asking for funds year after year. You can read more about the history of the program here .  A remote viewer is not informed about the actual target he or she is supposed to view. The monitor receives an envelope from a client (eg. CIA, DIA, a corporation). The monitor does not open the envelope, but he might say, the target is a person. The idea is to not 'frontload' the viewer with information that may taint the results. Once they receive and assignment, they can't listen to the news or even talk shop with one another. After the viewing, the env...