Other dimensions
I've touched on this once before, but in the interest of stirring
up some conversation around here...
I'm conflicted. I don't believe in a god, but during my Christian days I saw and experienced things that I have no explanation for. For example, my wife and I were at our church alone one night and we both saw "something". We called it an angel. Neither one of us spoke to the other about it until afterward and then it was one of those, "did you see something in there?" moments. We were in agreement about what we saw, where we saw it and when we saw it.
Naturally as Christians we assumed it was an angel from god and naturally we didn't have one shred of evidence to support that assumption. But that never occurred to us. After all, we just saw an angel! What more do you want?
I know naturalists will say something to the effect of it was all in our heads and I respect that, but I'm not so sure. While I no longer believe in god, I wonder if there are other "beings" in other dimensions/parallel universes (would this work with string theory?) that we occasionally come in contact with. We don't realize it or, as religious people, we assign it some heavenly meaning like my wife and I did.
As an apatheist, I am very amused with myself that at that time I automatically assumed it was a "God thing". Why did I assume that? I simply saw something. I didn't speak to it and it didn't speak to me. I have no proof that it was an angel and even if it was, I have no proof that it came from god.
BUT THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I ASSUMED!!! And until recently, I never questioned that assumption. Incidentally, neither did any of my friends when I told them the story. They too accepted that I saw an angel from god.
And we wonder why churches are full?
So, let's hear it. What are your theories about unexplainable phenomena such as I have related here?
I'm conflicted. I don't believe in a god, but during my Christian days I saw and experienced things that I have no explanation for. For example, my wife and I were at our church alone one night and we both saw "something". We called it an angel. Neither one of us spoke to the other about it until afterward and then it was one of those, "did you see something in there?" moments. We were in agreement about what we saw, where we saw it and when we saw it.
Naturally as Christians we assumed it was an angel from god and naturally we didn't have one shred of evidence to support that assumption. But that never occurred to us. After all, we just saw an angel! What more do you want?
I know naturalists will say something to the effect of it was all in our heads and I respect that, but I'm not so sure. While I no longer believe in god, I wonder if there are other "beings" in other dimensions/parallel universes (would this work with string theory?) that we occasionally come in contact with. We don't realize it or, as religious people, we assign it some heavenly meaning like my wife and I did.
As an apatheist, I am very amused with myself that at that time I automatically assumed it was a "God thing". Why did I assume that? I simply saw something. I didn't speak to it and it didn't speak to me. I have no proof that it was an angel and even if it was, I have no proof that it came from god.
BUT THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I ASSUMED!!! And until recently, I never questioned that assumption. Incidentally, neither did any of my friends when I told them the story. They too accepted that I saw an angel from god.
And we wonder why churches are full?
So, let's hear it. What are your theories about unexplainable phenomena such as I have related here?
6 Comments
Got a job as a night attendant at a funeral home, while I was attending Bible College. It included an upstairs apartment rent-free, as part of the job.
So, first night on the job. About midnight, the guy who is leaving takes me around, shows me how to lock up, turn off the lights, etc. There are no bodies in the funeral home that night. So, we are in the apartment, he reading, me studying for my classes next day. I am sitting in a kitchen nook, right next to a door which opens on to a landing and long stairway down to the lobby on the first floor.
Keep in mind, there is no one else in the building. It is about 10 past midnight. All of a sudden, there is a shaking and rattling of the door next to me, and the doorknob is turning back and forth, like someone is trying to get in. While I stand up to open the door, I say to the other fellow, "Who could that be at this time of night?", and he was just looking at me with wide open eyes! Within a second or two of the door rattling, I had opened the door, and no one was there. Nor could anyone have run down the long flight of stairs that quickly without both being seen and making a lot of racket running down the stairs.
Rather shaken (thinking of the implications), I did not sleep at all that night. When the manager came to work the next morning, I resigned, and after describing the incident, asked him if he had ever experienced anything like that. I said that in 20 years, something like that had happened twice.
So, even though I am a non-theist, I think, like you say, there may be a parallel universe or existence that we only get to glimpse briefly. There seems to paranormal activity. I did not imagine the physical manifestations, and there was another witness of the same event. But I'm not sure what it was, and it sure as hell (pardon the pun) does not in any way make me believe in the biblical version of god, satan and the afterlife.
But thinking about it, the question comes to mind: What is the natural world? Simply what we can detect with our 5 senses? Perhaps the "natural world" is bigger than we think and these experiences, while beyond our normal senses, are in fact, part of the natural world and religion has corrupted them by referring to them as spiritual experiences.
Hmmm.
There are some very good posts discussing exactly this topic at the link below, I think you might enjoy them:
http://triangulations.wordpress.com/2009/04/26/dont-believe-me/
And I wrote a ghost story here:
http://atimetorend.wordpress.com/category/supernatural/
And Scootwes, are you sure your manager didn't just install a motor in the doorknob to screw with his employees? Or perhaps a coworker? Maybe there really was enough time for someone to rattle the doorknob and then run off, but your perception of time and/or memory of it makes you think there wasn't (human memory is notoriously flawed). A mysteriously rattling doorknob is very far from evidence for the supernatural.
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
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