Chapter 8

Philosophers, other intellectuals and clergymen have bumbled, and continued to bumble, with the idea that the essence of man is a strange mixture of physical and spiritual being. They bumble, because such a view is inconsistent with reason, and they persist because the idea conforms with the strongest instinctive drive of all living beings: to exist and survive, even beyond death. But no system of logic yet devised can resolve the inconsistencies and paradoxes inherent in the belief that man is inhabited by a mystical, supernatural and immortal something called a soul.

Such a belief, when analyzed objectively, falls into the same category as belief in miracles: both are remnants, in an otherwise enlightened culture, of a heritage of superstition; both are terms invented to exalt the intelligence of man, who, rather than admit his inability to understand certain aspects of nature, labels these aspects unknowable or supernatural.

I submit that man does indeed have a soul or spirit, as the Bible claims, but that this soul, as a careful reading of the scriptures reveals, is not mystical or supernatural. And it may or may not be immortal, depending on God's discrimination. Unlike the mystical soul of church dogma, the real soul presents no paradoxes and is completely consistent with logic.

What is this real soul? Aristotle was on the right track when he said, "If the eye were a body, vision would be its soul." In other words, the soul is the function of the body: the thoughts, the acts and all the emotions - those things which are not physical - comprise the soul. It is by these things, along with his physical appearance, that we know the man.

Because thoughts and emotions have no physical characteristics and because man recognizes these as part of his totality, it is understandable that in his eagerness to substantiate the existence of a mystical, immortal soul he seizes upon these straws of evidence to support his view. But he misinterprets the facts: the existence of spiritual characteristics, such as emotions, does not validate the dualistic view that man is both spiritual and physical.

If it did, then by the same reasoning we could prove that a car or a radio or any other inanimate object is both spiritual and physical. For example, we can claim for the physical existence of a radio such items as tubes, resistors, and batteries, and for its spiritual being we can claim radio waves. If the dualist argues that radio waves do not equate with thoughts, he is on dangerous ground: they are both electromagnetic in nature, neither has an existence apart from a transmitter and a receiver, and neither has any so-called physical characteristics. True, radio waves have a measurable length, but thoughts also have wave lengths - not one length for one thought but a multitude of complicated impulses for even a simple thought. Make no mistake, the radio wave (the function of the radio) is the soul of the radio.

The argument for the dualistic existence of a car may be less convincing, but it serves to expose the fallacy of any dualistic view. The physical character of a car is obvious: its motor, wheels, chassis, etcetera. For its spiritual character we can claim its motion. A car may be fast or slow, sensitive or sluggish. It may be comfortably friendly or austerely formidable. These things describe the spirit of the car; they are not physical, but obviously they are not supernatural. They are only functions or characteristics of the car.

So, in man also, the soul is only the manifestation of the aggregate functions or characteristics of the person - admittedly more complex than in a car or a radio but nevertheless nothing more mystical. What mystery there seems to be stems from the complexity of the human anatomy, and especially of the brain. Once we concede that man is nothing more than an intricately complex computer, all mystery will subside.

Since we can construct machines that play chess and learn to avoid previous mistakes, couldn't we also, at least in theory, create a machine that exhibits joy at winning and sorrow at losing? Couldn't we create a machine that can learn to play other games - games more complicated than chess? Couldn't we in fact create a machine that can play the game of life? And couldn't we (acting as gods) employ a monitoring device to record all our machine's thoughts and use a radio device to add thoughts to its storage, or memory, units? And couldn't we create a new machine in the exact image of the old one with all the memory units and all the old characteristics unaltered? And finally, how much effort would it take for us to convince our machine that we were gods?

Could we make our machine have hallucinations or have him hear strange voices in the sky?

Could we put the spirit of the devil in him? Could we jumble his thoughts and make him speak in a strange tongue? Could we hypnotize him, paralyze him, blind him and "miraculously" cure him of disease when and if we so desired? The answer is self-evident: we could!

Practically speaking, the construction of robots resembling man, either in motor performance or in intellectual ability, is a feat not to be accomplished in the near future. The circuitry of the human brain alone, to say nothing of the peripheral nervous system, is staggering in its

complexity. But progress in miniaturization of electronic components, discoveries and breakthroughs in important areas of biology, and studies in genetics point to the ultimate achievement. Some day, given enough time, it will happen: man will create a being in his own image. And this being, remember, will not be supernatural; but when we tell him of his soul, he may misinterpret what we say and believe, as we have believed for all these years, that he is a dualistic entity - a mysterious mixture of physical and spiritual being.

An incident aboard the flying saucer that abducted Betty and Barney Hill suggests the possibility that even saucerians less advanced than our God can re-create humans in exact duplicate - possibly with the same thoughts, memories and personalities. If our observations are correct, duplicates of Betty and Barney are at this moment living in some remote region of the universe.

Keeping in mind that the Hills' abductors did not expect their captives to remember the experience (because of a post-hypnotic suggestion to forget it in its entirety), it is understandable that the saucerians may inadvertently have revealed some secrets of their technology. It was four long years before the saucerian-imposed amnesia was finally penetrated; and Betty Hill under hypnosis remembered many, if not all, of the details of the physical examination on board the alien craft.

She remembered that a needle was thrust deep into her navel, ostensibly for the purpose of determining whether she was pregnant. It seems unlikely that alien beings would be interested in, of all things, a pregnancy test (even if one could be administered in the fashion described). Rather, it would seem that something else was involved here - something far more intriguing. In view of the events that followed, I propose that the four-to six-inch needle was used to withdraw uterine fluids and cells to be chemically synthesized later to produce quantities sufficient to nurture and reproduce a human specimen - not just any human but an exact duplicate of Betty Hill!

For it was only a few minutes later that Betty was placed on a table before a machine which she describes as having clusters of needle points with wires running to a panel. The saucerian put these needles in contact with every part of her body but concentrated on the area around her skull. He told her he was conducting a test of her nervous system, but I suggest that he was doing more than just testing: I suggest that he was charting and blueprinting the entire circuitry of that system, recording for future use every memory and emotion that Betty Hill had ever experienced.

Though he doesn't remember it (having been more deeply hypnotized by the saucerians), indications are that Barney Hill underwent similar biological experimentation, for later he was afflicted with sores like warts in a circle around the area of his groin.

 When Betty, who carried on a rather long congenial conversation with the leader of the saucer people, asked whether they would meet again and if so, by what means the saucerians would find them, the leader, with a knowing laugh informed her that they would have no trouble finding her and Barney again. No doubt about it - he'd have no trouble finding them again if at that very moment he had their duplicates safely stored away in a test tube. This is a neat little joke apparently - even for a saucerian sense of humor. What else could have prompted the laugh?

The supernatural soul, according to dogma, is consistent with a supernatural god and supernatural angels. Interestingly, God's word as revealed in the Bible never substantiates these claims. Quite the contrary, the facts of the Bible substantiate the claim of this book: the man, angels and God are all physical beings and that spirit or soul in all three is electromagnetic in nature.

Some writers, in attempting to prove that angels are physical, refer to the many passages in the Bible which tell of angels sitting down to eat with humans. The two angels, mentioned earlier, who came to Lot's house and blinded their antagonists outside had a meal with Lot. But the angel Raphael, the Book of Tobias, tells Tobias that although he (Raphael) seemed to eat with them, in reality he used invisible food and drink for sustenance. Our question then is, is Raphael lying both times - once when he pretends to eat and again when he says his food is invisible? Even if it is true that his food is invisible, we at least know that he needs some sort of fuel to keep his motor running; perhaps he derives his energy directly from sunlight, as some life forms on earth do, or perhaps electrical energy is beamed to him from a nearby cloud-UFO. But no matter what the form of energy, visible or invisible, the fact is clearly established: he needs fuel! He therefore is not supernatural.

At any rate, if it is true that Raphael did not eat man's food, then, more than likely, other angels in the Old Testament only pretended to eat with men; and consequently we can assume that their chemical and physiological makeups are quite different from those of man. However, unless there are biological differences even among angels, how do we explain the following from Genesis, Chapter 6? "When man began to multiply on the earth and had daughters born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair, and they took wives for themselves, as many as they wished. Then the Lord said, 'My spirit shall not remain in man forever since he is flesh. His lifetime shall be one hundred and twenty years.'

"There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God had relations with the daughters of men, who bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown."

Earlier in Genesis, God, apparently when speaking of Himself, uses the Plural we and us. For example, after Adam and Eve had eaten of the tree of knowledge, God said, "Indeed! the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil."

In these passages it is abundantly clear that God was not alone at the beginning of the experiment on earth. He had with him beings whom He referred to as "my sons" and whom man referred to as as angels. We see that these beings were biologically compatible with humans and also experienced human sex drives. Apparently the genetic combination of angels and earthlings resulted in offspring considerably larger than the parents, and these God refers to as giants. Keeping in mind, however, the numerous and consistent reports of three and four-foot creatures sighted in or near flying saucers, we cannot rule out the possibility that present-day humans (with the exception of pygmies, who may pure-bred earthlings) are all descended from this ancient crossbreeding. Otherwise we are hard put to explain what happened to the giants of those days and afterward." Chances are that Adam and Eve were between three and four feet in height, which would make present-day humans appear as giants.

In passing, it might be noted that God's statement that His spirit will not remain in man forever is another way of saying that life, or the electromagnetic impulses of the mind, cannot last forever in a machine which wears out.

Many of God's meetings with Moses, as recorded in the Bible, indicate that God is a physical being. When Moses asked to see God's "glory," God answered that He would not show Moses His face, "for no man sees me and still lives."

Perhaps such a proclamation raises no questions in the minds of supernaturalists, but certainly to those of us who demand plausibility God owes an explanation. He leaves little doubt that He has a face, but the fact that no man can see it and still live is perplexing. Is God too shy to show His face? Certainly He isn't too ugly. Perhaps, on the other hand, He is too beautiful: perhaps a lowly human, staring on His countenance, would be overcome by the sheer beauty of it and die of a heart attack. This is the implication He gives - that man could not stand all that beauty - and Moses, at least, believed it. But a more reasonable explanation emerges if we but put ourselves in God's position: wishing to remain a wonderment to our subjects and realizing that no matter what the appearance of our face, its revelation would detract from our revered image, we pursue a policy of mystery. This is a psychology well understood by the veiled Islamic women of the East.

But God exhibited no such hesitancy regarding the showing of His back. Complying with Moses' wish, He made arrangements for Moses to see Him from the rear, and thus Moses stood with his eyes covered while God passed by. Then he was allowed to uncover his eyes and look at God's back.

If God has no physical being, obviously there would have been no reason to have Moses cover his eyes. And by the same reasoning we can conclude that God does have a face and hence is physical.

Consider also, as evidence that God is something other than a perfect spiritual being. His admitted humanlike frailties. In Exodus, Chapter 33, He tells Moses that He will send an angel to lead the Israelites to the "land of milk and honey" (keeping His covenant with Abraham) but that He will not go himself "because you are a stiff-necked people, and I might exterminate you on the way." Such a statement is most certainly incompatible with our view of a spiritually perfect God, and in fact is much more likely to have ensued from an emotional being similar to man.

Further evidence along this line of reasoning is apparent when we read of Moses interceding with God, who has decided to let His wrath consume the people of Israel for their crime of worshiping the golden calf.

Moses shrewdly and logically reminds the Lord of the consequences of such an act. He says, "Why should the Egyptians say, 'With evil intent he brought them out, that he might kill them in the mountains and exterminate them from the face of the earth'? Let your blazing wrath die down; relent in punishing your people.''

God seeing the wisdom of Moses, words, did relent, and the people were spared. And so the course of history was altered by the levelheaded thinking of the man, Moses, who managed to cool the inflamed emotions of the being, God. Which of these two, God or Moses, displayed supernatural qualities in this encounter? God indicated only that He had power; that He had at His disposal weapons to exterminate the Israelites from the face of the earth. We have such weapons today, but no sane person would ever consider their use, except possibly in self-defense. How, then, do we explain an all-good supernatural God who, because His subjects forsook Him to worship an Idol, was willing to exterminate them like vermin? How do we account tor a God with human weak-nesses unless we admit that He is humanlike?

It has been said that the God of the Old Testament is an angry God. Obviously He is; but it must be remembered that the God of the Old Testament is also the God of the New Testament; Jesus testifies to this many times over. So we can only conclude that either God had a change of heart or the leadership in heaven changed hands. In either case it is abundantly clear that God is much like man, whom He created in His image. He is physical and emotional, capable of both good and bad judgment, but most important of all - what sets Him apart from man - is His technological superiority. Science fiction cannot begin to compare with the magnitude or the scope of the accomplishments of these particular saucerians.

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