I would like to suggest my book. I think it is a message that EVERYONE needs to hear. It is a theory that ancient gods were really extra terrestrials, but since people were so untechnologically advanced, they thought these beings who could fly were gods. I can give you hundreds (literally) of examples from the Bible, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Maya, Aztec, Norse, Sumerian, Phoenician, and more, if you need!

Any thought?

I think we've already picked out our fiction selection for the month.

I do tend to sympathise with the view of my friend President Camacho that there are fewer things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, but all the same, it is an interesting topic for speculation. The first chapter of Ezekiel in the Bible reads like it is about extraterrestrials. Thoth the Egyptian ibis-headed god of wisdom looks like an alien. I wrote a short idea piece about this:

Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Horus and Thoth, maybe three or four others to make up the eight (ogdoad) or the nine (ennead), land in the ocean in a space pod from a distant star. They move to Egypt because it is fertile, isolated, climatically stable and at the geographic meeting point of the main land masses of the planet. Over thousands of years they live as semi-secret Gods. The fields of reeds are due west of the Nile mouth in the Bay of Libya, where the alien gods live on floating islands and some humans are allowed. They largely keep their knowledge and existence invisible to humans, but arrange to build the pyramids as a monument to their cosmic origins. Carrying his trusty harmonic djed, Osiris gradually morphs into the green god of life and death and the sun. Meanwhile, he and his team establish Atlantis by building oceanic cities on large fabric bags of floating fresh water. The end of Atlantis comes when much of California falls into the sea with a giant slip of the San Andreas Fault, sending a mile high tsunami several times around the world ocean that obliterates the hidden alien civilization on the high seas, with Aeolia the only remnant.

sympathize??? You have sympathy for what? My grasp of reality?

It's stories about beings landing on Earth from other planets that really sparked the idea for my book. The Dogon, a tribe in the middle of nowhere, have this tale. The Sumerians do, too...babylonians, mosopatamians, even distant tribes in the amazon! It can't all just be fiction and story telling...not when they know about all of our planets (even Pluto) and have depictions in their art of beings flying on rocketships.

...You're talking about tribes of HUMANS, who no longer exist, mostly, who would now, of course, have knowledge of our solar system, because technology has spread to almost every corner of the world, and it's not hard for people know to things worldwide anymore.

Also, if they were so "ancient," they wouldn't know that Pluto had ever NOT been a planet, thus you have just shown your own youth and naivete and derailed your whole system of belief. Did you forget to take your meds today?

Also see: Carl Jung, attn. collective unconscious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_unconscious

Could you please speak to me in a manner of respect as a human rather than a dog?

I am speaking to you like a human. I don't speak to dogs.

You're awfully sensitive considering this is the internet.

"Did you forget to take your meds today?"..or am I just making that up?

You know, for someone that is an atheist, you really make it look bad. I am sorry, but you have to admit you have spoken very harsh to me. Internet or not, you have done nothing but insult me the whole time I have talked to you. I do admit it was my mistake calling you a "sir" and I am sorry, but asking if I have taken my meds, "What proof is there that your God exists, beyond what you think in your head? "..basically implying that God is just a figment of my own imagination even though I have done the research..and so on and so forth, and then you go on to say "You should also be less judgmental and more open-minded - the atheists here are good people and intelligent and good discussion companions"....first off no one is being open minded to me. Ever since I have gotten on here everyone has trashed me just for writing a book..calling it wrong and a waste of time and yadda yadda yadda..and then you go on to say that the atheists are good people when you act as though you just another internet noober who goes around insulting people because the people can't grab you back. I have said nothing wrong to you, and have even treated you with respect by saying things like "(respectively)" when I disagree. Hows about some of that compassion my way?

a) The meds thing was a joke. My humor is dry and sarcastic. You can handle it.

2) You have done research, but this does not produce evidence for God. You may BELIEVE in a God, and that is fine, but suggesting that what you believe is based in scientific evidence is dishonest at best, and I don't take kindly to people who don't know the difference between beliefs, opinions, and facts.

d) I'm actually not an atheist, but I don't really want to go into that, because what I believe is not important. All I have said to you is that your belief does not prove that God exists, and whatever you have experienced is important to you and no one is depriving you of that, but you can't use them as proof of the existence of any supernatural being.

I'm sorry I came off as harsh, I guess I was being a bit cold, but it really irritates me to see people make the claims you have, and I really wish you and others who believe as you do could make the distinction between "belief and experience" and "proof and scientific evidence." By saying your experience doesn't prove God's existence, it doesn't downplay your experience, only that you can't prove it beyond your experience. In that way, yes, God is a figment of your imagination, but if you did some more research, perhaps some less biased research, you'd find that the idea of God being a figment of the human imagination is not mine or even new -- and it's more likely the case than any other explanation of God. Again, I suggest you read some things about psychology and religion, particularly Carl Jung's idea of the collective unconscious and collective memory. The link is in one of my previous replies.

Also, when you say "respectively" when you disagree, you're using the wrong word. What you mean is "with all due respect" or "no offense." "Respectively" means "in a particular order," which is not what you are trying to say. Just a helpful hint for future grammatically correct posts.

Original...certainly no comparisons to Erich van Däniken or Stargate.

All right, thank you. I will remember that from now on. My English isn't the best because I grew up in South Africa, Afrikaans was the language.

As for my experience, it really does happen to be a bit of proof. I have had two experiences really, and both of them can correlate into a deity up there. By the way, the term "up there" actually means in the clouds..where the extra terrestrials used to live. That is where the "up there" and "down there" comes from.

As for Carl Jung's theory, I have heard it many times. It is almost accurate and almost not. We as a society are a materialistic society. In total around the world, something like 6.5 billion people are materialistic, the other .2 making up things like tribes and out-of-society people. Why are these people not materialistic if the consciousness for the whole Earth is to strive for material? As for the collective consciousness, that would mean that our brains would all be linked by some unseen force, hence contributing to the fact that there are other realities, continuing deeper would be to go into the God theory and so and such.

As for other peoples research, I believe it does constitute a high role in my research. After all, I am a researcher, not a scientist. I have no degree in school because I won't pay people to tell me what to think.

Ian Stevenson collected over 20,000 - 25,000 cases of plausible reincarnation in his lifetime. These are people who remember something about their past life as a kid (or sometimes an adult, but mainly a kid) and will do things like (when the parent calls his name) my name is not John, it is Khalid, and I am 26 years old and died in Baghdad...and upon doing extreme research the parents will find that someone like that did die at age 26 as the kid tells, much like the child will say in a car accident and it proves accurate. 26,000 cases in a 20 year span he collected. Also, the birthmarks on the children are the same as the dead bodies (for example, if Khalid had cut his leg and bled to death, there would be a birth mark on the childs body). This may not be proof for God, but reincarnation is a definite. (Read one of the many Ian Stevenson books available).

In the book The Romeo Error, Lyall Watson manages to weigh, watch, photograph, and measure the soul of someone leaving their body upon death. Read that book if you want some more.

Then, through the many works of hypnosis, case after case (including my own), there is just so much evidence to support that people reincarnate. My ex girlfriend went under hypnosis and came out knowing things about me that I never told her, nor could she look up (for example, my nose does not work in this life. I can't smell). I went through this and found out I was sacrificed by being cut at the stomach. A few months later I looked down and, though just faintly), there is a scar across my stomach in the exact pattern I was sacrificed in during my hypnosis session. This is called regression (going back under hypnosis). One of the men who started the New Age stuff was Brian Weiss. In his first book, the lady he hypnotized knew stuff about his dead son (how he had died, how old he was, etc.) when Weiss had never even had his sons death mentioned in a paper, nor did he tell her because he is a psychiatrist and doesn't discuss such details with his patients.

Then you have people seeing the ghosts of spirits. People have captured ghost voices on voice recorders, and people have taken footage of ghosts appearing and then disappearing. Read The Ghost on 87th Lane to learn how a woman was tormented for years by a ghost.

Then you have near death experiences. Of course many people say that it is a lack of oxygen to the brain, but many people do have oxygen in the brain when they have this experience (read Reflections on Life After Life by Raymond Moody. In this you will see that some people have even been saved by mystical experiences.). Of course anyone can make a claim that it is fake, but when people come back from this experience knowing things they shouldn't, then it deserves a deeper look. There was this one report where this lady was going through a Near Death Experience in a hospital and knew what her mom, dad, and grandma were talking about...even though they were in a cafeteria on the other side of the hospital. Also, sometimes loved ones from the other side give people information to bring back with them, much like "The jewelry is hidden in the back yard in this certain spot" and when they go try to dig it up..its there!

In Looking For Carrol Beckwith, this detective was on a dare to go through a hypnosis session to see if he had a past life. He was an atheist and didn't believe in all this "bull shit". Upon going under hypnosis, he regressed back to where he was a man painting a picture of a lady tilling some ground. Upon awakening, he spent the next 2 years looking for the picture in art galleries and everything. He never found it. He made an oath to go to one more art gallery and then quit the search, thinking that perhaps it was all just in his head. Upon going to that art gallery, he saw the exact picture he had drawn. He was an author by the name of Carroll Beckwith. He couldn't have seen this on the internet because this picture had been in storage since 1912, and no photos had ever been taken of it. Not only that, Carroll Beckwith had 2 wives, ones name was wolfe (I can't remember the others name at the moment). The author had had two wives, and both of their names matched Caroll Beckwith's wives names. That is too much of a coincidence.

During hypnosis, people go back to where they were abducted by extra terrestrials. This is how people usually find out they have been abducted in the first place. Upon talking to the E.T.'s telepathically, it turns out that the E.T.'s also believe in one universal creator...a "God" if you will. Atheists, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, have all had this happen. It is too coincidental that their hypnosis sessions all speak of E.T.'s believing in one supreme being as you put it.

There are just so many more examples I have from my research..and isn't it weird how all of these relate to the existence of life after death? That is no coincidence. Many people will say "Well that's just cause we all wonder what happens after death", but if you all of a sudden get shot from behind and go through one of these in a split second (any of these experiences), you aren't even thinking of death at the time!

There is some comparison, but what I do is I break the image of all the gods the world over, and then say there is a God, but basically through spirituality you can find him. I don't believe if you don't believe in God or are a Christian because there is no "hell" for him to send you to. There is reincarnation, and you may reincarnate on a nasty planet or a crappy life, but certainly that is your choice. He won't force you to reincarnate anywhere.

Yes, poor deluded Camachino, you have my deepest condolences.
What I meant, in saying I have sympathy for your view, was that theories about alien abductions, extraterrestrials, actual Gods, magic, supernaturalism, etc, have no evidence to support them. The world is best explained by science. My initial instinctive response, simpatico I hope to yours, is to regard advocates of alien contact as crackpots. However, I enjoy the world of mythical imagination, eg the mystery of the pyramids. A dose of mythical fiction is good fun. If John is polite and engaging then people should extend him the same courtesy.