Thursday, August 07, 2008

Biblical evidence against "Stone Tape Theory"

I recently read a good article that questions the assumptions most paranormal investigators make about "stone tape theory." Other than that, I recently came across a Bible verse in psalms that dispels the core logic of stone tape theory.

Stone tape theory, also known as residual hauntings, is the idea that a ghost repeats itself. Usually at a specific timed event, such as the anniversary of that spirit's embodied death, or at the stroke of midnight. Stone tape theory is the idea behind what causes it while a residual haunting is the phenomenon itself. What stone tape theory proposes is that the earth can record certain events if the conditions are right and play them back under some set of special conditions (similar or otherwise).

I've been a pretty strong proponent of STT until recently because of a misunderstanding of Genesis 4:10 where Abel's blood cries out from the ground. But what brought me back to looking at that verse was a recent wandering to Psalm 103:15-16. In both Psalm 103:16 and in Job 7:10, a specific reference is made that the place does not remember the deceased.

As a place, a bed of limestone - even a magnetically charged one - should not remember anything. That means one of three things.

1. People who "see" ghosts are mad, hence the surge of reports reflects the overall human race traveling down the road of insanity.
2. Supernatural occurrences are happening more frequently but being misinterpreted as ghosts.
3. The media is a lying and the supernatural/ghost craze is perceptual, or worse, is another instance of life following after "art" (if you can call anything on TV "art").

I have to admit, though, a riveting thriller from Ambrose Bierce, Washington Irving or Ray Bradbury gives me pause to think about mortality and the mysteries of a world bound to it.

Call me cynical but everyone is born inherently evil; selfishness, greed, envy, spite, anger, bitterness, arrogance and pride exhume themselves like Hollywood zombies from our rotting hearts starting the day we're born. It takes extraordinary care, work and divine intervention to draw us away from our own natural disaster.

Perhaps it's these ghosts in our mind that keep chasing us. We each have our own tell-tale heart. After all, that's what Stone Tape Theory is, isn't it? Rocks that tell a tragic tale over and over again until those who hear it go mad.

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Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Demonic door-to-door brush salesmen.

Corby Stephens posted a call for people to give up their stories on demonic possession. Most people responded with first or second accounts similar to the Hollywood-famous flying Ouiji board scene from so many of the horror movies it produces. A few posts were about eerie people resembling a page out of the script from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. As crazy as their accounts sound, I am one of those who fall in the camp believing them to be possible - without the gratuitous green vomit and rotating heads.

It's interesting to note that there’s a growing movement to communicate with "the dead" built into modern culture.

Shows like Ghost Hunter and Most Haunted seek to communicate with the spirit world by informal seances called vigils. Through EVPs they get frightening results. They also have called on mediums for guidance.

Outside reality TV there are plenty of other shows that indicate that society has gone over the top to put "romance" in necromancy: Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies, Ghost Whisperer, Medium and Supernatural to name a few.

The internet is also full of ghost hunting podcasters and specter-seeking clubs who use questionable techniques to contact the spirit world. Very dangerous stuff. It's about as safe as taking down you're dad's 1960 chemistry set, mixing all the powders and potions then quaffing it down in the name of science.

Only a few times on any of these shows have I heard mention that demons, acting like the liars they are, will play the part of impostor to misguide and even hurt people. But that’s usually before a showdown between some silver-bullet toting vigilante and a shape-shifting Balrog, which presents the thought of demons as believable as the existence of a Keebler elf.

Perhaps the society we live in is so washed out with political correctness that the demons don’t really have a desire to present themselves. Doing so would risk being discovered and it’s easier, and perhaps even more of a game, to sit back and watch us stumbling to our own ethical demise.

The society as a whole has the spirit of Satan. I mean that in the most literal definitive sense. It is working in opposition of God. That's where the majority of demonic power appears evident.

In all of this, I have a question. If the media is so bold as to teach that necromancy is romantic and exciting, why aren’t churches just as bold to acknowledge the issue.

Demons were real and problematic in the days of Noah. They’re seemingly more subtle today, but sometime in the near future it will be the days of Noah all over again. Did God put a restraining order on them or are they strategically hiding since it’s nearly impossible to believe in them without also believing in God?

Even more astonishing is that throughout the Bible, demon possessed people freely went into the synagogues (Mark 1:23) and hang around Jesus to be exorcised (Mark 3:10-12). If demons really had all that much power over their host, what would compel them to get so close to God? Was it just to stir up a little trouble with Jesus the same way they did through the possessed girl towards Paul in Macedonia? I know arrogance is a sin, but that all seems to go beyond sin into stupidity. Maybe demons have wised up over the years and learned they can do more harm by remaining unseen than in the Hollywood limelight.

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