Did Animals Talk?

Once upon a time, a serpent spoke to a woman. After it had deceived her, it was cursed to slither on its belly.

True or false?

I'll leave that up to you. But I will say it's true. And if it was cursed to crawl, that indicates it didn't crawl before. Had it been a four-legged beast? A winged phenom? A lizard man?

Maybe God did some serious body modification to make a snake. Yes, I know, maybe it was metaphorical. If it was metaphorical, though, what was the story symbolic of? And why not write in poetic form? It was written as a historical narrative. Thus. . .

It was history. Which means an animal really talked.

Why didn't Eve think this was strange? I don't know. Maybe because everything was new to her, and this was just another new thing. Nobody had ever told her that animals don't talk. So did other animals talk back then? Were there conferences among the beasts of the field? Or was it only the serpent?

Who knows. God knows. We can ask Him when we see Him.
But this serpent wasn't the only talking animal in The Bible. The book of Numbers tells a story about a donkey whose mouth was "opened by God". She was giving her master, Balaam, a ride. He was on his way to go curse Israel for money. God had told him not to go, but Balaam kept asking. God seemingly changed His mind and let him go anyway.
But. . .

He dispatched an angel to kill Balaam. The donkey saw this and tried to get away. Balaam couldn't see the angel, so he got annoyed at Donkey for going off the road.
So he beat her.
The angel got closer and Donkey squished up against a wall, squeezing her master's foot. He smacked her again.
The angel came even closer, sword in hand, and donkey lay down. Balaam hit her with his staff a third time. The LORD got involved now!

"What have I done to you that you've hit me these three times?" asked the donkey.

Balaam should have been shocked, but he yells at her instead!

"Because you have mocked me! I wish there were a sword in my hand, for I would kill you!"

Huh? What did he know that we don't? Why wasn't he surprised?

So Donkey replied: "Am I not your donkey on which you've ridden all these years? Have I ever done this to you before?"

At this point God "opens" Balaam's eyes so he can see the angel who is ready to strike him dead. Then the angel basically gives props to the donkey who has just saved her worthless master's life. Read Numbers chapters 22 and 23 for the whole story.

So. There were talking animals in the Bible. And at least two people who were not surprised for whatever reason. Things were weird back then. Angels, giants, floods, ground swallowing up people, you name it. There is much we don't know. Maybe animals did talk before the Fall of Man. Maybe not.
But it does make me wonder if my cat is offended when I say he's fat. . .

 

Scan Me, Copy Me, Upload Me

I like to get weird with you. Paranormal, Bible stories, super heroes, aliens; I like weird stuff. And so do you. So here is another weird-bomb for you:

Can our minds be uploaded?

Some of you don't know what I'm talking about. Some of you do. Here is the idea: When our bodies get old or sick, we will be able to copy our minds and upload them to machines. Not necessarily humanoid machines, like androids, but any kind of machine. This raises a lot of questions, of course. Will the copy be "real"? And what happens to the original? For some answers, turn to some excellent novels by Robert J. Sawyer:

I like Red Plane Blues better. It's a mystery set on Mars in the future, while Mindscan is set on Earth and the Moon. A man's copy takes over his life while he goes to live out his remaining years on the Moon. Things don't go well. . .

This topic is one of transhumanist's favorites. They see it as the future of mankind. That and mega-scale engineering and virtual reality. Check it out here. Fascinating stuff. No, really. Go read it.
Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity, has been talking about this for years. He sees man and machine merging around 2045. The man is brilliant. He works for Google now as their director of engineering. I'm convinced he is a machine, seeing as how he talks about this merging so much.

But let's get philosophical. Let us pretend we can scan, copy, and transfer a mind to a "container", like an android. What is it? New life? Or a continuation of the same person? Will that person live on, or is that copy just a vast collection of information, basically artificial intelligence like The Vision?

Personally, I think the copy isn't the real person. The soul and consciousness are tied to the body, to flesh and blood, and when that is gone, so is the spirit. A spirit cannot inhabit a machine. The transferred mind isn't a transfer of the real individual, just a file that can be uploaded. A recording, if you will.
The mind is usually thought of as being separate from the brain even though they are connected. The mind belongs to the spirit, and when the body ceases to function, the mind goes with the spirit to its destination.

Any way look at it, strange times are ahead. Kurzweil predicts body part replacement by 2100. Not a bad thing if you lost your arm. Computers being integrated with our brains are also being talked about, and I don't mean ear implants. But mind uploads? Why do it if it isn't really you?
Ego?
I realize these scientists are smarter than I am. But some of them don't believe in God or an afterlife. To them, we are information on a fleshy substrate that given a few more decades, can outlive are own meat-tents and live forever. Maybe they enjoy the idea of Utopia. Who doesn't? Me, I just don't think consciousness can be transferred.

But maybe you think differently. Maybe you think it can be done. Maybe you are dying and think you would do this if the opportunity ever arose. To you, any life is better than un-life.

Would you do it?

 

Is God Schizo?

Does anyone out there see a contradiction between the God of the Old testament and the God of the New Testament? One was violent and egotistical, the other kind and forgiving. Obviously the product of two different minds and two different cultures.

Not so.
Jews wrote the Bible, Old and New. Same culture. The difference was, in ancient times, the driving influence, or 'wind', was war. Everything revolved around war. Today, it revolves around money, but back then it revolved around war. Conquest, killing, ruling by might. God used this prevailing wind in His own ways, using it as a way to communicate to the nations. He seems to honor man's culture, even if it's wicked. War was the language that they understood. If an enemy won a battle, it was because their god helped them. If the Jews won a battle, the nations would see that their God was the true God, and the pagan gods were weak or nonexistent.

I touched on the supposed bloodthirstiness of God in an older post. Look to your right and you'll see the link. God, being Creator and Owner of every atom in the universe, can destroy anything or anyone whenever He wants. He doesn't, but He can. What appears to be God being violent or petty is actually God being exasperated with sin. He is holy, and all sin is abhorrent to Him. Imagine walking in on a sexually perverse scene going on in your home. You would be repulsed. Why? Because it offends your very soul. And in your house, you can mete out justice the way you see fit, because a crime is going on in your home. Now imagine you are God. The beings you made are offending your holy nature by defying You in Your own home, the earth. They do repugnant things with their minds and bodies. Do you let bygones be bygones, or mete out justice? Remember, it's your house and you can do what you want. You are The Judge, The Lawgiver, The Executioner. The buck stops with you.
Do you let them go, or punish them?

Being God, you can blow up cities, command a group of people to kill another group of people, flood the world, and use unholy nations to discipline your own people because you own everything. You define what is 'good' and what is 'evil'.

God is still the same God. But in 4 B.C. or so He sent his Son to us to give us a new message: God forgives. It was a new dispensation, a new administration of God's mercy. The wind of war had run its course. people were getting used to the idea of peace, order, and democracy.
It was time for Jesus.

He did not nullify God the Father's personality, He pacified His wrath. But the Father was also pictured as being kind and merciful in the Old Testament. Remember Nineveh? He relented from destroying it because the people repented. Now, He relents from judging the world to give people time to repent and believe on Christ. The discrepancy of  'Old vs. New' was not in the writers minds, but in modern readers'. We don't understand the depths of our sin, so we think God should be a kind old grandfatherly push-over. That is wishful thinking. Our sin offends God. Even the little ones!

So no matter how angry or vengeful God appeared to be in the Old Testament, none of it was wrong or unwarranted. He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. What changed was how he dealt with people. Instead of the sword, he gives a healing hand. Instead of raining fire, he gives missionaries. The mistake we make is not reading scripture correctly and not understanding who God is.
The two go hand in hand.

Ugly Little Bubbleheads

Anybody out there ever seen a Bubblehead? You know: four feet tall, big eyes, bald, spindly limbs? Commonly called "Greys" (Or is it "Grays"?). That stereotypical alien made ubiquitous by abduction stories and Hollywood. And Whitley Strieber.

What are they? Are they real? Are they hallucinations brought on by fantasy-prone individuals who watch too many sci-fi flicks? Hoaxes?
All the above, of course.
What we do know is that they operate in secret. When is the last time they walked the mall? And why do they appear at night when people are sleeping? What is it about sleep that brings out aliens and  demons?

Lots of questions, yes. But for those who believe the extraterrestrial hypothesis, ask yourselves why they don't reveal themselves openly and why they experiment on people. An advanced race has to terrorize people? For what reason? If you could travel across light years, would you hide yourself and steal sperm?
Evil operates in secret.

Perhaps they are not E.T.'s, but evil spirits. Abductions have a lot in common with demonic visitations. There is a growing trend who believe this, or at least believe we are dealing with extradimensional visitors and their vehicles, even if they don't want to go so far to say it may be satanic.
No matter how you look at it, it's weird.

Here's a recent spin on all this: Area 51 is a recent book by Annie Jacobsen. At the end, she records a conversation she had with an old engineer who supposedly saw the Roswell craft and its occupants. This man said they came from Josef Stalin, who sent them to America to draw attention to their surprise landing, which would give Russia the opportunity to attack. The "aliens" were supposed to land in a city, but crashed in New Mexico instead. The Army said it was a weather balloon.
And those pilots? They were surgically altered children, made by Josef Mengele.

What? You don't buy it? It's probably more plausible than aliens. In fact, it may be more horrifying. What man can do to each other is evil enough without adding in the supernatural, and Mengele was a sick, sick man.
Artificial Bubbleheads. . .

My own opinion is that "abductions" are demonic in nature, meant to steer people away from the belief in God. They tend to denounce Christianity and distort the nature of Christ. They have called themselves "Elohim" to connect themselves to the Hebrew God. They make themselves out to be God in the minds of people who believe in them.
They are messengers with a lie.

As for UFO's, there are many explanations for them: clouds, flares, planes, hoaxes, giant alien beings, evil spirits, secret experimental aircraft. Shoot, if we can split the atom and go to the moon, I think we can devise a craft that moves at impossible speeds. It doesn't have to be from another galaxy. And those Bubbleheads? They've created a good story, which this guy with the funny hair passes along:

But. . .maybe he's right in a way. Maybe "they" have stuck their skinny necks in our business for a long time now. He thinks they're aliens, I think they're evil angels. They are both otherworldly.

What do you think?