Hi,

Every now and then, I still "lurk" on this site.  At present, I don't want to intrude myself into the theological debates simmering on this site, suffice to say that I think I can disprove almost everything that critics of the Bible have recently said.  If you want me to elaborate this claim, communicate with me via a "private message."   Many posters from here now communicate with me via E-mail and I'm grateful to the site for many new friends.  But I want to keep my promise to assume a low profile until summer and to plunge into these debates now would force me to develop long threads.
But I thought you'd be interested in three points about this particular post:

(1) The Bible does not explicitly address the question of other life in our universe, though the Hebrew term "elohim" often means not "God" or "angels", but "heavenly beings," the identity of which is a mystery.   

(2) Belief in extraterrestrial life is not unprecedented in early Christianity.  For example,
Origen, an early church father, (late 2nd-early 3rd century) taught that the universe teems with other worlds populated by intelligent life that requires bodies appropriate to that world.  Contrary to the New Age consensus that Origen taught  earthly reincarnation, he often ridicules that idea.  But Origen does teach that in the afterlife many will incarnate in new bodies in these other worlds.

(3) Then there is Jesus' teaching in NDEs as opposed to the Bible.  For example, consider what  "Jesus and the angels" tell Howard Storm during his NDE about God's nature and extraterrestrial life.  Jesus dominates the conversation, but the proximity of angels sometimes makes it unclear to Storm whether it is Jesus or one of His angels that is communicating telepathically with him.  As an academic specialist in life of Jesus research, I am certain this really is Jesus and not some archetype or masquerading helper, despite His controversial claims that are sure to alienate some fundamentalists.  Here is a sample quote:

"The angels refer to God in many ways, but the term most often used is The One.  God is the One because God is the source of everything.  There is NO THING other than God.  Everything came from God and everything returns to God.

They explained to me in a way I could understand that God is like an artist who creates for the sheer pleasure of creating.  One of our attributes that is in the image and likeness of God is our desire to create.  We are creative not only as artists, musicians, writers, and performers, but as parents, workers, healers, lovers, and learners.

God creates universes which in turn become procreative.  There are countless intelligent beings in the universe we inhabit and infinitely more in universes that occupy othe dimensions.

The Creation is entirely in the NOW to God.  God's consciousness is the entire creation.  Everything that was, and everything that will be, is this moment to God (pages 68-69)."

One pet peeve of mine is that New Agers commonly conceive of God as "All That Is" and act as if this conception is novel or anti-Scriptural.  In fact, it is quite consistent with biblical teaching, just more inane and simple-minded because it is less nuanced.  For example, it overlooks the distinction between ways God is transcendent and ways God is immanent in creation. 

I want to recommend two books that many of my new friends from this site hav already read or will be reading and disussing with me.  In my view, both books are the best of their kind ever written.  Not surprisingly, the first is Howard Storm's "My Descent into Death."

His NDE in Paris is as dramatic as any ever recorded.  But what makes his book so riveting is the role of angels (discarnate helpers?) in saving him from certain death and guiding his spiritual path.  Storm was a militant atheist at the time of his NDE, but is now a United Church of Christ pastor in Cincinnati.  What makes it especially important for me are all the subtle nuances of Jesus' postmortem teaching to Howard, nuances often not widely recognized.  In fact, Storm's Jesus has changed my mind on a few theological issues.
 
IMHO, the second book is also the best book of its kind ever written: David Fontana, "Is There an Afterife: A Comprehensive View of the Evidence."
If you read Fontana, you will know what you're missing from standard discussions on this site.  When I return to the site this summer, I will be discussing many of the issues raised by him.  To give you an idea, here are his chapter titles:

1. Survival of Death: Questions and Beliefs
2. Evidence from Modern Parapsychology
3. Evidence from Apparitions
4. Hauntings
5. Mediumship: History and Background
6. Mental Mediumship
7. Three Outstanding Mental Mediums
8. Drop-in Communicators
9. Proxy Cases
10. Are Statements by Mediums Too General and
     Too Trivial? (a discussion of Schwartz & others)
11. Physical Mediumship: Independent Voice
     Phenomena
12. Physical Mediumship: Materializations and Other
     Phenomena
13. Physical Mediumship: More Recent Examples
     and the Question of Fraud
14. Instrumental Transcommunication (If you're
     interested in that communication device Bruce
     was trying to make, you'll love this chapter.)
15. Near-Death Experiences
16. Out-of-Body Experiences
17. Reincarnation
18.  The Nature of an Afterlife

OK, back off my soapbox and back into obscurity until summer.

Don

P.S. And no, Marilyn, I don't know JD, but I do admire his courage and grace under fire.

Dear Raphael,

New Agers pay a terrible price for their incestuous and cultic orientation that typically prevents them from critiquing their view from the perspective of a broad range of academic disciplines.  Your comments are a case in point and illustrate the New Age penchant to create a cartoon  caricature of views they can't be bothered to study in depth.

"Especially not an entity that is outside creation like Christians are teaching."
________________________

Wrong!  Christians believe that God will ultimately prove to be "All in All", an expression equvalent to "All That Is "(1 Corinthians 15:29).  But no, I do not vouch for the New Age distortion of this concept. Thus, "Jesus and the angels" rightly tell Storm, "There is NO THING other than God.  Everything came from God and everything returns to God." This insight is hardly "heretical" as you suggest: e. g. "For from Him and through Him and back to Him are all things (Romans 11:36)." 

"When it comes to the afterlife, you usually see and get what you expect."
__________________________

Another New Age caricature that ignores the actual research evidence.  There is no correlation between belief in God and the likelihood of an encounter with the Being of Light during a NDE (s0 Kenneth Ring).  So to their great dismay, atheists often encounter Jesus during their NDE.  The conversation typically goes something like this: "But I don't even believe in you."  Jesus: "But I DO believe in you."  This point was recently reaffirmed on George Noory's "Coast to Coast" by a secular NDE expert who has examined thousands of cases.   This researcher made another interesting point: he said that in thousands of Buddhist NDEs examined, not one claims to have met the Buddha.  Instead, they sometimes claim to meet minor figures from Buddhist tradition. 

Osis and Haraldsson compared the NDEs of 500 Americans with those of 500 people from India.  Among their findings, contrary to expectations, there was no mention of reincarnation in the Indian NDEs.  In general, the American and Indian samples significantly overlapped and contradicted the expectations from religious upbringing in both cultures.  Al this is shocking because there are many kooks out there and many bogus NDEs.   So you might expect every imaginable type of encounter to be frequently alleged.

"Also, I would like to point to you that the Christian God created man in his image...so they have a problem with E.T."
_______________

No more than anyone else. Again, you opt for a simple-minded caricature.  Peter tells us we are destined to "participate in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4)", i.e. reunion with God  The Bible never rules out the possibility that other intelligent species from other worlds might not be permitted to do the same.  Remember, everything comes from God and is reunited with God--that is basic Christian teaching.

Don

Raphael,

The website you give is irrelevant to my point.  I didn't say there weren't cultural differences between the USA and India. And prior expectations can affect the NDE in certain ways. I said there were similar core experiences.  In stressing the similarites and contrdictions with prior expectations, Osis and Haralsson add that the Being of Light did not normally identify itself.  People projected a presumed identity onto it.  Given this pattern, it is all the more remarkable that Noory's researcher whose name escapes me) found that Buddist never meet Buddha (Siddartha Gautama).  For that matter, find me even one example of a Muslim meeting Muhammad.  Meeting Allah doesn't count because "Allah" is just an Aranic word for "God." 

You don't respond to any of my other points.

Don

Of course, the Being of LIght often does identify itself in other NDEs and studies.   This is particularly striking when atheists often encounter Jesus during their OBEs.

Raphael,

The Bible clearly teaches that God reveals Himself through a variety of other myths and symbols to peoples of other cultures and faith traditions.  And the earliest church understood Jesus as the Word or "the Logos," a Greek term that just means the rational self-expression of God as opposed to God in His unknowability.  So my prior expectation would be that Christ or God would manifest in terms that seem rational to the deceased righteous souls who may never has heard of Him. 

My real interest here is this: in NDEs and in so many other spiritual areas people make untested assumptions.  For example, it is often claimed that in NDEs the Being of Light appears as Jesus to Christians, as Buddha to Buddhists, and as Muhammad to Muslims.  That's why Noory's NDE expert, apparently not a Christian, got my sleepy  attention when he cited his Asian colleague who had investigated thousands of Asian NDEs and found no examples of Buddha appearing to Buddhists.  I myself have searched for examples of Muhammad appearing to Muslims in NDEs, but so far have found none.  I'm not an expert in this area and so may soon find some exceptions.  But as I said, the overall pattern is what's important.  You can find some kooks to say anything and NDEs are sometimes confused with other psychologically dissociative experiences.

Don

P.S. Please read Fontana.  I think you'll love it.  You might not be ready for Storm's book.

I've also always wondered what happens to all of the souls of people who lived and died in ancient/cavemen times before there even was a Jesus/Moses/Mohammed/Buddha etc...

Will they not be allowed into the afterlife/"heaven" simply because they worshiped ancient "Fire Gods", "Sun Gods", "Moon Gods" etc...?

ROTFLMAO !!!!!

Dan you're too good !

Make a play out of this 

Sorry.  "Cufesceses" is an inexplicable typo. I meant to type "Cushites." (not that it matters).  Typos are on the increase for me lately.  I recently E-mailed Roger and signed off "God" when I meant to type "Don".  I was kinda pontificating about something to him.  So it might have been witty if I'd done it deliberately.  But it was an accident and so perhaps a Freudian slip?  Yech, I guess I'd better read the new post on Ego.