Dr. Kenneth Samples is a philosopher, theologian, and co-author of, "Lights in the Sky and Little Green Men.' Dr. Samples and Ken McMullen share a thoughtful, and insightful, conversation regarding the phenomenon. Dr. Samples also tells the true story of the night he dreamed of a face that changed the course of his life.
Find this book, and other resources from Dr. Samples, including his latest, "Christianity Cross Examined," at reasons.org
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I keep an eye on the UFO stuff. There's an element of it that's
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just fun. Like a Bigfoot is fun things
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like that the Loch Ness monster I hate when they scan the bottom
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and don't find it because I like to pretend there could be
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something down there, it's just fun.
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The thought of UFOs, not on the scary side or independence day
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is just kind of fun. But hokey and and isn't taken
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very seriously. And when people talk about it,
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not taking very seriously because of the the joke we've
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made, it attacked from Mars and whatnot.
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However, if I'm in, it's hard to judge what you see in media.
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But with what the government's released with all in, it's hard
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to believe what you see because of editing and software and
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such. But what it looks like to me an
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average Person out there. It appears something's going on
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and I think they may have answered their own question to
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what it is to some degree. And here's my hypothesis, then
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it's all going to. You is There's some small tiny
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percentage of things that can't be explained.
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That's happening in the skies and they seem to be not of this
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material Universe in that the Maneuvers that are being made.
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If the speed at which things are moving and changing directions
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and disappearing, frankly is beyond any physical matter were
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aware of then it goes into. Well it's some kind of
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extraterrestrial matter that we are not aware of in my mind
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they've answered their own question and saying it's not
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physical matter. Well then what would it be?
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Conversely. It would be spiritual matter in
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not disappearing, but possibly traveling back, not to alternate
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universes, you can't really travel from what I can tell
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because of our distances would be seemingly impossible to get
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from place to place but that there could be some dimensional
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thing happening with living Energies.
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Or or some kind of in something with intelligence.
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That has Intelligence and isn't a material object, like a disk.
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What's your thoughts on where I'm at?
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Well, I think if you think about UFO phenomenon, it's kind of
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like you have to fears on one hand, you have plenty of people
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over the last 50 or 60 years, who are engaging in, in what I
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would call you fo religion, UFO, Cults, and UFO, religion and
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Cults are steeped in the ahold. In fact, some Scholars would
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say, A that the idea of UFOs first came out of a seance.
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So it's very common for people who are in UFO, religion or UFO
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Cults to believe in the Paranormal.
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Now, on the other hand, that's one sphere, that's kind of
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religious practice. If you will, then you have the
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other sphere of the, with the aerial phenomena.
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What people, what people are seeing the government is
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admitted and they have judges that they have detected.
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Now, the question is, could that be explained naturally?
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Well, I think most people think a good bit of what people see
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could be explained naturally, you know, man-made phenomenon,
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or misidentified phenomena. On the other hand, there is
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there is at least elements of the aerial phenomena that are
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very difficult to explain natural.
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They don't operate like physical realities in the sky.
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They don't seem to comport well, with the law of gravity and
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things of that nature. So something strange appears to
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be happening again. I would propose it's probably a
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very small percentage of the of the larger aerial phenomena that
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people have been seeing for four decades, but it does appear that
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at if the if there is a reality behind the UFO phenomenon and it
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is of a spiritual nature rather than a physical nature,
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certainly from a Christian point of view, from a Christian
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worldview, point of view, it could be that people are
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encountering some kind of spiritual presence, some kind of
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paranormal potentially a demonic phenomenon, right?
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I mean, speaking of a Christian point of view, I mean the New
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Testament speaks of not wrestling with flesh and blood
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but principalities Powers rulers in high places in the Heavenly
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realms. So what would you defy?
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Is this where we would call a Heavenly realm as possibly
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another word for dimension? Well you're exactly right.
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The Bible, the Bible speaks of a realm of existence where there
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are beings that are not physical in nature and they're not
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Angelic. Beings that do the bidding of
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God, they appear to be fallen Angelic beings that Christian
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theology would identify as being demons and it I think it's very
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clear biblically and in accord with historic Christianity that
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part of reality. Another part of reality, an
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extended part of reality. If you will involve some kind of
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spiritual realm where demonic beings Operate Now, from a
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Biblical point of view, they seem to have the capacity to
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move in and out of the spiritual.
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Come into our time-space world. But you know again, in looking
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at this UFO phenomena, at least some of it.
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And and it's not just Christians who are saying this, some
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leading experts on UFOs jock, valet is a very good example.
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He's been studying UFOs for decades, not necessarily a
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Christian he believes that this reality, at least in part maybe
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the Paranormal What is a Fifth Dimension?
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Or where does this Tenth Dimension and all these
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Dimensions come from as far as like a scientific point of view
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comes from? Yeah, well, I'm not a physicist,
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my background is more in Theology and philosophy, but I
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think it's very clear that scientists have talked about
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dimensions of reality that moved beyond our, you know, our
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time-space world. And you know, it's it's
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difficult to to think About that type of Realm that potential
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type of realm in your normal kind of cause and effect
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scientific relationship. So from a naturalistic point of
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view that is, you know, a person who believes the physical
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universe is all there is in philosophy.
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We would call that naturalism a worldview where there is no
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Supernatural. The universe is all there is On
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the other hand, from a Christian point of view, while the world
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is real the world of time and space and matter and energy is a
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real reality. There's something more there,
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something that moves Beyond Time space matter and energy and that
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would be some kind of spiritual realm.
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Obviously if you take the Bible seriously, if you take historic
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Christianity, seriously then you're recognized that there was
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something That took place even before creation and that is some
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kind of spiritual relationship between God and the Angelic
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Kingdom. And so from a Christian point of
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view, we we certainly affirm the critical importance of the
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natural world which appears to have had a beginning.
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Which I think seems pretty consistent with what the Book of
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Genesis indicates that that God, created the heavens and the
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Earth yet. There is this Potential
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spiritual realm and it and it poses challenges though, you
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know, one of the things that I have observed in my study of
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UFOs is that it always seems kind of a strange phenomenon it
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kind of defies logic and reason and rationality it always seems
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rather in inexplicable. It's never clear and
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straightforward. It seems in my Trying to be
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deceptive and I would argue as a theologian.
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I think that the Demonic is often expressed at least in the
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western part of the world. Not so much in counterfeit
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Miracles but in deception and it, you know, even even the
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government discussion of it, they are they appear to be
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perplexed as to what the ultimate.
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Explanation isn't. And again, I think other other
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Scholars who have approached this topic and are not
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necessarily not necessarily carrying any kind of religious
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conviction, and so they can't be dismissed as having a religious
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bias. They see, there's there seems to
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be a parallel between UFO phenomena and paranormal
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phenomena. Yeah, yeah, and if somebody
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steps up, With any kind of logical explanation, they are
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the masses. Listen.
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Ancient Aliens has its own comic on going on.
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They're rock stars. And to me I love each and Aliens
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is something I love and I show that I hate because I learned so
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much about archaeology and things history in the world.
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But to me, I want to see what your thought is that it's easily
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explained by what you're saying in the worldview, and the
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explanation that if there since before the creation of the world
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is the spiritual realm that can come in and out and be seen and
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not seen by physical people in matter, that they know
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mathematics and they can easily influence architecture and the
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building of pyramids in one part of the world, when that world
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couldn't communicate to the other part of the world, Because
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they're not limited by that doesn't necessarily mean that a
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spaceship got up and traveled around the world as star people.
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And trained to them. Yeah, when I was a teenager, I
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read Von daniken. You know, Chariots of the Gods,
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right? And I'm a, an avid watcher of
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the History Channel and I used to like it because they would
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show a lot of footage of World War Two.
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But it seems that Ancient Aliens has kind of taken over and
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that's what apparently, what a lot of people like seeing.
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Yeah, I think the idea of an ancient You're not appearing in
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you know aiding human beings in the development of Technology
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through an extraterrestrial Source.
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I don't find that convincing. I think the ancient peoples were
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probably a lot brighter than they often are given credit for.
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But nevertheless, if you think back to history, people have
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seen strange things in history in World War Two.
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For example, there were the Whoo Fighters.
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We're not just Allied Pilots but access Pilots saw images were
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they were being tracked by some kind of reality.
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Even in the 19th century, you have what appear to be at that
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time dirigibles or blimps. So people have seen strange
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things in the sky. Now again I come back to though
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a point that I think is important Horton.
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When you look at broadly, the question of ufology there is the
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kind of religious practices and UFO religion and I don't think
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there's any doubt whatsoever that that religion is rooted in
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the occult. It is, rooted in spiritism, it's
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rooted in seances. I think that's that's a pretty
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T, much accepted idea. On the other hand, the aerial
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phenomena that has multiple X possible explanations.
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But at least one of, at least some of, maybe it's just a small
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percentage of what people see in the sky or recorded in the sky
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acts in such a way that it doesn't comport well, with With
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natural science and there, I think you could, you might be
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able to make a connection that, you know, is it possible.
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Let's let's delve the psychological angle for a
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moment, is it possible? People who are predisposed to
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believing in the Paranormal are largely, the people who have UFO
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encounters. Now, again, that would be hard
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to it would be hard to determine that but I think it I think it
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has some explanatory power and along that it seems the majority
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of in the little green men in the end up abductions.
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And that kind of which I think you're putting under the kind of
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religious occult part is coming from going under hypnosis and
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so-called getting memories recalled that they may have not
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even known until that point. Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a
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strange phenomenon. Phenomenon.
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It is an interesting one. It is difficult to come to any
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kind of definitive conclusions about them but I don't I think
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the recent discussion by the military and what was
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communicated to the American government, I think the military
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has probably never been so candid before I think in
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history, if you go back to project Grudge project, Book,
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all of these, you know, at the time of the Cold War people were
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seeing or reporting things in the sky and the American
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government was very much interested because there was,
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you know, is this, is this, the Soviet Union and even today,
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there, the government admitted there, they've raised questions.
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Could this be a technology set forth by Russia, or by China?
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Or could it be, could it be American and the government's
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not Revealing but I think I think that the government the
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American government, his was pretty candid in saying there
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appears to be a reality here and we don't really know what it is.
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Yeah, we tend to separate. whether it's UFOs or Spirits
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away from Faith, but it shocks people they say, well, I don't
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believe in you no Spirits or anything like that, that could
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be and I think well, What do you think?
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Angels are, what do you think? God is, I mean technically right
00:16:44
there, they're aliens we've Christians follow a person that
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said I'm not from this world. I came from another one.
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I'm going back to another one. So if you think in those terms
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is, it has nothing to do with the whole Loch Ness monster side
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or flying discs with little green men and lasers.
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It has to do with the reality of like you've been saying
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something Beyond That is just beyond our physical selves that
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maybe we are Spirit people. And if within our bodies and if
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that's the case, then things like the Bible could be, right,
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or in some element, what? Even those ancient people
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thought was, right? They were just way more
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spiritually open than we are and Western modern society, to be
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interacting at some level. With with a spirit world dark or
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not. Yeah I think that's right.
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I think you know as a as a Christian Theologian as a
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Christian philosopher, I would say that that Christians believe
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that reality is is deeper and more complex than merely, the
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physical material Universe Christians, very much a firm
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that we live in a real physical world of matter.
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Energy time and space, that it that it had a beginning, which I
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think is again, pretty consistent with big bang
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cosmology but Christians, believe that there is a deeper
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element to it is reality. Also exists in a spiritual form,
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and, and from a Christian point of view, God is an infinite,
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Eternal, try personal Spirit after all Christians believe
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humans have souls. That is the non physical or the
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Virtual part of us. And we believe that after death,
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there will be a realm that will involve the spiritual.
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And so, yeah, I think it's correct to say that that those
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and not just Christianity Jews and Muslims, and Eastern
00:19:04
mystical religions Hinduism and Buddhism.
00:19:07
Believe that there is some reality that extends beyond the
00:19:10
physical Right? And this podcast is specifically
00:19:18
geared towards Divine Encounters in your life.
00:19:23
Is there a specific moment or a time or a couple times where you
00:19:28
could say, for? Sure, this is passed just my
00:19:32
intellect and that this Faith makes sense to me, logically
00:19:37
intellectually. But something spiritual has
00:19:40
happened to me, or I've been a part of.
00:19:45
Yeah, when I was, I grew up. I was baptized as a
00:19:49
four-year-old and in the Catholic religion, Family kind
00:19:54
of fell away from our Catholic roots and so, when I was a
00:19:57
teenager, I went through a real period of searching.
00:20:02
I felt like there was something missing in my life.
00:20:06
I thought, well, maybe if I become a rich and famous
00:20:09
ballplayer, maybe that will fulfill it.
00:20:11
Or if I meet the right woman, maybe that will fulfill it, but
00:20:15
I was definitely searching. I felt kind of a restlessness in
00:20:19
my life and lo and behold, Our family experienced what I would
00:20:25
call a family catastrophe. My older brother who was who
00:20:31
suffers from psychological challenges in his life.
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He became part of the countercultural movement and
00:20:41
unfortunately became addicted to drugs and after a period of
00:20:47
incarceration, my brother took his life.
00:20:50
So he was about 27 at the time. I was 19 and that really threw
00:20:57
me. It really put me in an
00:20:59
existential crisis. I felt I felt guilt that I
00:21:02
couldn't help my brother and I felt like, wow, I really don't
00:21:06
know what life is all about. And so I began reading, I like
00:21:12
the Beatles. So I was listening to George
00:21:14
Harrison chant Harry. Krishna I was looking at the
00:21:18
different religions of the world.
00:21:19
In one night, I had a dream and it was like, no other I'd ever
00:21:23
had in my life. I dreamed that I was in a cave.
00:21:30
And I, as I looked around in the cave, I noticed that I was on my
00:21:35
knees and I was dressed in what appeared to me to be a robe.
00:21:40
And so it was an odd phenomenon. So I began looking carefully and
00:21:44
I thought I saw what looked like a window in the cave.
00:21:48
And as I look through that opening, a man's face appeared.
00:21:53
And initially, it struck me as very unappealing, the man seemed
00:21:58
ugly, but as I concentrated a little bit more, it looked like
00:22:02
the man had had bruises. It looked as if he had been
00:22:06
beaten and bloody later in many years after I had this dream, I
00:22:14
saw an image of Jesus in the Orthodox tradition, they have
00:22:20
icons paintings of Jesus and Mary Mary and the Saints, the
00:22:25
man's face. Look very similar.
00:22:28
Now, in that dream, then this man spoke and when he spoke it
00:22:34
was like thunder. And it just kind of knocked me
00:22:40
on my face. And when I woke up, when I woke
00:22:44
up, I wasn't sure I was awake or still dreaming.
00:22:47
So I jumped out of bed. I was all sweaty and I thought,
00:22:51
oh my gosh, what, what did I just experienced?
00:22:55
Now again, dreams are hard to Define dreams or hard to
00:23:01
confirm. You know, is it just just
00:23:03
psychological pictures and images.
00:23:06
In my mind or did I have some kind of encounter?
00:23:09
What I can tell you is that that treeman in a very important
00:23:15
part, led me to go out and do something I'd never done before.
00:23:20
I bought a Bible, I bought good news for modern man which is a
00:23:25
paraphrase of the Bible and I began reading it every single
00:23:29
day. I discovered later as a
00:23:32
Catholic, I could go to church every day, they have mass 78.
00:23:36
I am so I started going to church and I went to mass every
00:23:40
day for two years. I began praying later.
00:23:45
My sister who had become a Christian, she gave me a copy of
00:23:49
Cs Lewis's book, Mere Christianity, and all of that
00:23:53
changed my life. In fact, my life changed so much
00:23:56
in a spiritual and Christian direction that I had friends
00:24:00
that I had grown up with a gun to school with played on the
00:24:03
baseball team together, a couple of them said, Can your life is,
00:24:07
like night and day. And even my parents, they
00:24:12
couldn't believe the change in me.
00:24:15
Now, I believe that, you know, Christianity is true.
00:24:20
Jesus is indeed the Son of God, but I can tell you that, that
00:24:24
dream, and again, would I be able to prove it was Radical?
00:24:28
That is that it was actually a supernatural invention or
00:24:33
whether it was just a subjective psychological.
00:24:36
Tate. I don't think I could prove it,
00:24:38
but what I can say is that dream, never left me.
00:24:42
It always had it, put an imprint on me and it led to things later
00:24:48
that really did, transform my life.
00:24:51
And so, do I believe I had a Divine encounter, I think so,
00:24:57
and by the way, I've met other people.
00:24:59
And sometimes I've even met Muslims who had dreams and saw
00:25:04
the image of Christ and became I'm Christians.
00:25:08
So would I would I present this argument to an atheist to try to
00:25:13
prove my bait? Probably not.
00:25:16
But from us, from my own vantage point, it's something that if
00:25:21
than is never left me.