Chariots of God (Scripture & Photo Examined)

I have seen a ten-milligram Zyprexa tablet with my own two eyes, and I am pretty sure they are real. I'm pretty sure they help my son's schizoaffective symptoms, too. Ask your physician if maybe they could be appropriate for you, Scott.

Do you know what the Holy Spirit looks like? Can you show me? He does not look like nor is He a dove. It is you who cannot identify the Spirit. You cannot tell me that I am wrong when you do not even know what the Holy Spirit and chariots of God look like yourself.

You do not know the reality of the spirit world. I am neither schizophrenic nor schizoaffective. I am a mystic. I am a spirit-filled Charismatic Catholic. My faith and knowledge has come to me through the Holy Spirit. I have seen and talked to the dead. Those without God in the afterlife are evil and wicked. They are in ruins and of no value or worth. They have anger and hatred in their hearts. They are without family and friends. God restores the soul upon entering heaven and gathers the believer to their family and friends.Edited by ScottRP, : No reason given.

Again, so you claim. Yet you offer no supporting evidence and have even said you are not here to offer evidence but to just "testify". Well, your testimony is worthless.

i think the explanations tend to be a little more down-to-earth than that, for both aliens and demons. they actually have a lot in common, particularly when you consider sleep paralysis disorder.people used to report waking to find a kind of demon called a succubus (or incubus) sitting on their chest, that they were unable to move. now, people tend to report waking to find themselves paralyzed with an alien in the room. descriptions are pretty similar, too: waxy grey skin, relatively featureless, big eyes. it helps that society is a bit of an echo-chamber: we have this image of aliens in our popular consciousness, so it's what we tend to see.personally speaking, i've seen one. so, come at me, scottrp.i woke one night with one of these demons staring me in the face, and i couldn't move. it had waxy grey skin, was featureless, and utterly terrifying.but, i knew what sleep paralysis is, and i understood that was i only half awake. i found a detail in my surroundings that wasn't congruent with reality (there was a CD playing on my bedside stereo, but i'd left that CD in the car) and focused on that, and forced myself awake. i think aliens probably do exist elsewhere in the universe. i'm skeptical that they have ever visited here (or ever will within the lifespan of humanity as a whole), but i remain open to the possibility of alien contact.i don't think they will look humanoid, or like images our brains are known to produce under certain influences, or while half-awake.

Why the video of Hellyer then? You can't even keep track of what you're saying. Again... projecting much? Don't think we're all like you.
Anyway, can you dismiss the possibility of an hallucination? Can you dismiss the possibility of sleep paralysis? We know hallucinations happen but we don't have good evidence for aliens. Occam's razor apply and cut in favor of hallucinations. You do not know the real and true meaning of "knowing" but you're still hard-headed about it.

You do not know things at all. You have seen nothing yourself first hand. You are like a parrot. You merely repeat back that what you hear from others.

And your interpretation is what, that it was completely an invention of your own mind?The UFO researcher whose name I couldn't think of earlier, was Jacques Vallee. I read one of his books years ago, after I was a Christian, and found it fit in with my Christian beliefs although he has no such beliefs himself and ends up thinking along a different line in the end. Here's the Wikipedia description of his thinking: Your apparition was the currently popular "grey alien". I've never seen one of those but I have had a few experiences of sleep paralysis in which some kind of otherworldly being was involved.One of those experiences goes way back before I was a Christian. I woke up in that twilight state unable to move hearing the voice of the friend of a friend I knew only slightly, who had recently died, saying "Cut out that burning, I'm trying to get through to you." I think it was hearing a voice -- it was pretty loud though I knew it was in my head and not in the room -- that completely woke me up. I remember the sentence vividly, I remember the man's very distinctive voice, I have no idea what "burning" meant, or what he would have wanted to "get through to me" about, I never found out and am quite happy I didn't. I'm sure I told my friend about the experience but nothing more came of it. After becoming a Christian I became convinced through the Bible that dead people do not communicate with the living and it had to be a demonic impersonation. I had two other similar experiences after becoming a Christian, the appearance in my room of a person threatening to kill me, who disappeared when I woke up, and another time of waking up with the sensation of hands around my throat choking me. In both those cases a prayer to God is what broke the paralysis and the vision or sensation.I've never seen a "grey alien" but I think all such experiences have the same source, and they aren't just products of our own minds. This is along the lines of what Vallee concluded about the UFO phenomena: they have appeared throughout history in many different forms that all have similar characteristics. He noted that experiences of things like fairies and leprechauns, ghosts, the Marian apparitions, etc and etc., all have qualities in common. He decided that UFOs and Extraterrestrial visitors were just the latest manifestation of whatever these phenomena are, the latest designed to appeal to the modern scientific mindset. I don't remember if he imputed consciousness to them, but I don't see how there could be any other explanation myself once you've concluded the phenomena are real, as he did, and "capable of manipulating space and time." There are clearly variations on these experiences too, from the personal twilight-zone experiences you and I have had, to the publicly shared phenomena of some UFO sightings and Marian apparitions.The only really viable Christian understanding of all these things is that they are demonic apparitions, all of them. There may be different species of demons though, that I wouldn't know, but they're all sentient beings that are usually invisible, and I think it's fair to regard tnem as of the general class of "fallen angels," those who follow THE fallen angel, Satan. It's interesting that Vallee could get as far as he did toward a remarkably similar understanding of these things just from scientific observation.Christians report many such experiences, such as the proliferation of elaborate experiences of "heaven" in the last decade or so, and I'm sorry to say they're pretty gullible about them. They should know they are counterfeits from the biblical revelation but they often don't. As I keep saying to Scott, the increase in these kinds of apparitions is perfectly in tune with Jesus' warnings about the last days, not to believe in claims of His appearances in particular, but any of this sort of phenomena that lead away from His teachings. Catholics are gullible to Marian apparitions but they are exactly the same kind of demonic counterfeit. I doubt it myself but in any case that isn't the same thing we are talking about here, as you say.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

And you refuse to answer questions, going into insults instead thinking it would help your cause.Can you dismiss the possibility of an hallucination? Can you dismiss the possibility of mental illness?The answer, for you, is absolutely no. Go get yourself checked.

Do you think it is wise not to believe in God? Can you dismiss the possibility that heaven and hell are real?

Which god? Which theology about "god"?Review Pascal's Wager. Which of the near-infinite number of gods? Which of the somewhat-but-still-widely numbered theologies of each of those near-infinite number of gods?For a discussion of fundamentalist Christians' "After-life Insurance" argument, please refer to my page, DWISE1'S CREATION / EVOLUTION PAGE: After-Life Insurance.From decades ago, I remember a statement by British philosopher Bertrand Russel. It addressed a fundamental difference between Protestant and Catholic thought (quoted purely from memory):

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When a Catholic becomes a free-thinker, he becomes an atheist. But when a Protestant becomes a free-thinker, he simply creates a new church.

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There are many understandings of "God". You are wagering on your own singular idea of "God." What are the odds that you are right?Associated with your own particular understanding of "God" is an entire intricately intertwined theology about "heaven" and about "hell". Compounded with the odds that your understandings of "God" are right, what about the odds that your own particular understanding of "heaven" and of "hell"?So then what are the odds for your particular position?

Of course it is wise to not believe in God; belief in a God is not reasonable, logical, rational or evidenced.But that is also totally irrelevant. Nothing you have presented in any way offers any reason to believe in a god and rather simply indicates not just utter ignorance but willful ignorance at best if not insanity or dishonesty.

I couldn't put it better than dwise1 just before this post.Also, no one dismiss the possibility of heaven and hell are real. We simply don't have evidence of their existence. The default position is always don't believe until you have evidence. And before you say it, the bible isn't evidence of the existence of a god, only evidence that people believed in a god. That's a pretty big difference.Should I remind you that you still didn't answer my questions? Can you dismiss the possibility of an hallucination? Can you dismiss the possibility of mental illness?

Bear with me, spidey: these are digressive reflections, Omni-bio style, and not everyone's cup of meat. The hallucinogen dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is infamous for this effect: like the UFO abduction phenomena, the DMT experience often includes gray aliens/elves who sometimes perform invasive tests.

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Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is a naturally occurring psychedelic drug found in many plants and animals, and has been claimed to naturally occur in the human brain itself (Strassman, 2001). DMT, less well-known than other psychedelics such as psilocybin or LSD, is striking for the brevity and intensity of its effects. When smoked, for example, hallucinogenic effects begin almost immediately and resolve within 30 minutes. As a result, it is sometimes known facetiously as the businessman’s lunch trip (Cakic, Potkonyak, & Marshall, 2010). One of the most remarkable features of the DMT experience is the frequency with which users encounter non-human intelligences, often resembling aliens. Even more remarkably, some users come away from these encounters convinced that these entities are somehow real (Strassman, 2001). The psychological aspects of such experiences have not yet been adequately explored by scientific researchers.

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Two points interest me here: Scott's conviction that his orbs must represent something both holy and real, despite cautionary Biblical passages, and Faith's belief that his reports must represent either fraud or demons. It is a truism to observe that such certainties can lead to barbaric actions; it is also true. Setting the contentious consequences aside, I want to look at both certainties through the lens of my Abby Normal brain chemistry.I see faces in folds of cloth and clouds, hear spontaneous "soundtrack" music appropriate to a present event or mood, as well as hearing music emerge from sounds as diverse as my own heartbeat, pulse and breath which then develops into complex symphonic structures; and, yes, voices that offer narrowly specific content. More on that later. Indeed.As I've reported before, since early childhood I've experienced what most religion's adherents would term mystical (or demonic, I suppose) states. I learned later that to outside observers I was experiencing petit mal seizure-like states, so insensible to sensory input that a football coach teaching botany once picked up my entire student desk and dropped it while I blissed out, because I hadn't responded to his shouted threats. At first, these states occurred when I was alone in a natural setting, and were essentially pantheistic, the commonly reported oceanic experience, the sense of union with all things accompanied by a sense of reverence and awe. While ecstatic, these never took on the imagery or symbolism of Christian belief.But when I explored the mystical literature in search of understanding, I found those transports taking on the symbolic imagery of the specific works under study. Now an aging man, these transports occur less often, once again almost solely in natural settings, devoid of any formal religious trappings. I still occasionally hear voices. More on that later.I drew no conclusions about the world from all this other than the recognition that a brain normal enough to function successfully in the world could also generate those experiences. I suspect that some of the earliest purveyors of religious interpretation, shamans, were individuals with similar experiences: all living things are connected, and life can be informed by a joyous sense of it, all the more so when that sense is yoked with knowledge.Shamans in diverse cultures turned to naturally occurring hallucinogens to achieve visions. I also explored hallucinogens as a young man, and found the two experiences--my own transports and the chemically-derived trip--quite distinct. I never believed, for example, that the visual and auditory experiences of LSD, were real; during out-of-body experiences, I still knew I had a body which was generating the OOB state via chemical stimuli. While I did experiment with home-cooked DMT, I never saw aliens or elves; I knew my buddy wasn't really turning into a werewolf.As to Scott's certainty of a Christian origin for his visions, we need look no further than the local specifics of his birth and upbringing; Faith's false dilemma--fraud or demon--also derives from her own literalist religious background. Scott's orb experiences are apparently so compelling that he attends to neither Biblical cautions nor any other test to establish the orb's bonafides--to request those tests is to confess spiritual failure. Faith's most common response to large bodies of evidence is to suspect even larger conspiracies, and to defend the evidence is either to join the conspiracy or be taken in by it. The false dilemma is the hallmark of the literalist.Both fail to take into account the fact that these states have been reported by humans beings for almost as long as we have human reports, since long before the religions that condition their own views existed. Brain science is zeroing in on the genetic and physiological roots of spiritual/religious states. It is the intersection of a narrow religious certainty and a broad ignorance of human experience and brain science that condition polarized and dismissive points of view.I first heard voices (voice, actually) in the fifth grade--I can be that specific (I could date it to a particular day, if I had my old schoolwork). We began the study of poetry that day, followed by a poem-writing exercise. Mrs. Montgomery, that dear woman whose patience I martyred, told us to listen for inspiration: we'd know it when we heard it.And so I did! A small, still voice dictated an entire quatrain. I've written poetry ever since for my own satisfaction and insight, without any strong literary ambitions, but 20+ years after Mrs. Montgomery, I submitted a ms. at the urging of an undergrad mentor, and was selected by a Nobel Prize-winning poet for his MFA program. I add that not to boast--many such workshops fill every year, after all--but to demonstrate the "voice" offered more than just poesy-babble. Afterwards, I went to work as a gunslinger manuscript preparer in medical and legal offices while building PCs and studying database programming at night.Who wants to be one thing? I recall in those days waking up from a dream of nested arrays of macros, a 3-D chorus line of little ladies who soft-shoed out of their boxes and introduced themselves and their abilities. It wasn't Xanadu or a benzene ring, but I ran to the computer and typed furiously, anxious not to lose one line.Scott's orbs, Faith's demons, my visions, voices and music--we all sound mad as hatters. But these things are actually quite common, and there are rational explanations for each. Exploring the scientific context of my own experiences--Paracusia? Pereidolia? Cross-chatting cognitive functions that usually from a seamless, synthetic experience of identity but don't in my Abby Normal brain?--is a lifelong hobby.Had I lived these experiences in the context of a religious certainty, I think I would have gone unhappily mad in the land of paranoia and obsession. Instead, I could enjoy the show and sometimes turn the phenomena to useful purposes--from a rapt, restorative experience of being to creative expressions of lyricism and coded logic.A strong grounding in reason and science empowered me to observe my own idiosyncracies (or idiopathologies, if you like) without despair or mis-inspired belief. As a child, the combination of a rational perspective and an exotic internal life gave me precocious insight into the difference between the world as it is and what our brains can make of it.I wish Scott and Faith the best: they are, I believe, sincerely reporting how they apprehend the world. I also wish them both better seeing and better visions.

it's well understood to be a product of the human mind, and i certainly made it go away with only the power of my own mind, and not invoking jesus or anything. well, it wasn't exactly. notice i didn't mention the eyes? it didn't have those big, black almond-shaped eyes. though i have seen things with similar features in dreams, but still not exactly the classic graylien. and sleep paralysis is well understood. we know what causes it, and what is going on in the brain at the time. i've actually been in the room and awake with someone having a sleep paralysis episode, and i can promise that the otherworldly apparition she saw wasn't actually there.