Evolution and spirits
by Chris Tann 149 Replies latest watchtower bible
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sowhatnow
i thought all breathing things were souls, so, when animals die, why are there not animal spirits all over the place? hmm I always wondered about spirits myself.
i have had some experiences with a ghostly like woman when i was a 4 yr old , yes a 4 yr old. she walked through the wall when i was in my bed.
she came across the room and got into bed with me. i rolled over and closed my eyes in fear.
well, this happened a few times.
i still recall the exact layout of that room, and im 52.
and the fact that this spirit was a woman with long hair makes me wonder why a 4 yr old was 'dreaming' something so real.
as a child in this particular apartment i also recal getting up walking of the top of the stairs and jumping into the air and floating down. many times.
now why would a child age 4 in 1965 when tv was rarely watched, and in black and white have such dreams? i lived a boring quiet life.
while in this same apt, my mother says that many mornings after my father left for work, she felt someone hold her down in bed and she couldnt get up.
she attributes all of this to the fact that she was 'studying the bible' with my aunt who just brought the jw faith back with her from california. we moved out of that aprtment and did not have any experienced like that UNTIL one day my school freind who I found out liked to play the oija board games and read spiritistic books,[ at age 13], gave me a bag of clothing. one night that week, i heard voices on the other side of the door. it was 2 am so it wasnt the tv. i told my mom about the voices and she told me that it was probably demons that came form my friends house.
she made me give the clothes back and i never heard them again. and thats back then, but wait,
last year i was working in a store in my area, an old store. i was bent over stocking shelves when i heard someone walk past me and saw a brief figure out of the corner of my eye, go into the back room, knowing it was only me and my manager, i stood up and looked back expecting to see her, when i did not I yelled for her, and she was in the front of the store, i said, 'who walked into the stock room? she said 'no one , why?' i told her what i heard , and she came walking back with a grin on her face and said ' you saw him, the ghost who lives here'.
now mind you, im not a kind of person who believes in such things nor am i afraid of the dark, or things that go bump in the night. so i dont look for these things to happen. they do out of the blue.
coincidence, ,maybe, but it was very odd huh?
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punkofnice
now why would a child age 4 in 1965 when tv was rarely watched, and in black and white have such dreams? i lived a boring quiet life.
Probably because life was boring?
Some dreams seem real. You are talking about something from 48 years ago. A lot of water flowed under the bridge since then. Memories get distorted and you were very young.
I am yet to experience anything ethereal.
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OneEyedJoe
sowhatnow - sounds like your mother, and probably you, experienced sleep paralysis. It's a pretty well understood phenomena that is probably responsible for a pretty significant number of so-called supernatural experiences. In short, your body is either gearing up for sleep, or not yet fully out of sleep mode (in the evening or early morning respectively) and the body is still paralyzed and the visual centers of the brain are still highly active. Your body is usually partially or fully paralyzed when your asleep (that's how you keep from running around the house when you have a dream about being chased) and sometimes this can start to take hold a bit before you fall asleep. you probably inherited a predisposition for the condition from your mother.
When you're falling asleep, your brain is also gearing up for some wild, crazy and realistic visual and auditory hallucinations. Most folks call them dreams. Just like the effects that keep you paralyzed in sleep, this can sometimes start a little bit earlier or last a little longer than needed causing waking hallucinations.
Effects like this also explain why some families seem to be haunted, with many generations reporting similar visions in the moments just prior or just after sleep.
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sir82
at what point in evolution did God start adding souls?
Don't the Catholics attempt to harmonize the Genesis account & evolution by answering that question?
I.e., don't they say something like "the moment of Adam's creation was not a literal physical creation, but the imbuing of a soul into him" or some such?
It's all poppycock of course, but at least it attempts to be internally consistent.
JW doctrine used to be internally consistent, until Freddy went senile and the logical gaps were plugged in by nitwits and numbnuts.
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Caedes
I find it funny that the more superstitious the environment the more likely people are to 'experience' supernatural events. As people become more rational and skeptical the less likely it is that these things happen.
I was riding home one very dark evening and could see a number of shining eyes floating in the distance. Once I got closer I could see a dark bank that was impossible to see until you got close, there was no sign of the eyes but there were some foxes running away. Someone who was predisposed to believe in ghosties might have had a more colourful version of the story.
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Viviane
As an Engineer, it is my opinion that Psychology is fluff (like Sociology, Philosophy, and Poly Sci). It's pure snake-oil.
In what way does being an engineer give your opinion any weight?
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Onager
I can tell you an experience I had *last night*. I fell asleep waiting for my wife to come home and woke up in terror because someone was jumping up and down on the bed. The figure was really skinny and had a long coat and a hat on, pulled down over their eyes. The dog jumped off the bottom of the bed and ran out of the room like the clappers. I sat up and heard the key turn in the door downstairs and the figure vanished.
Now what I *think* happened was that my wife opening the door woke the dog who ran downstairs to say hello and all the rest was my mind trying to make sense of it all. The figure seemed perfectly real to me but I am sure was created entirely by the dog jumping off the bed. Well, that or a skinny ghost decided to wake me up for fun. Which is more likely? :)
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Simon
LOL at the Ghost Buster type shows. Here is EVERY episode:
Host is filmed in house at night with infra-red camera which looks spooky.
No one thinks to turn the lights on.
Lots of "what was that?!" shouting and camera whizzing round (but never anything to see).
Nothing happens at all other than the presenters work themselves into a state.
Some excuse given for why they need to turn the cameras off for a second.
Claims of amazing things that happened while the cameras were turned off.
Credits then ads <- why they make this crap.
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Simon
Also worth noting: many skeptics can do the feats that psychics do and are happy to explain that it's trickery and fake.
And yet people will still believe in psychics and the paranormal with a 100% lack of any evidence and plenty to the opposite.
Still, the stories are great - I love "Supernatural" the TV show so it's not all bad.