BS: Are there really Angels?

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 May 04 - 10:35 AM

Coincidence is a term given to circumstances for which one is unable to provide another explanation. That doesn't mean that there isn't another explanation. All events have causes. When the cause is unknown we call it luck or coincidence.

The fact that we don't already know everything should not be all that surprising, but it seems to really bother some people. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 22 May 04 - 11:29 AM

In fact, LH, coincidence is simply a term given to two or more events which happen at the same time - 'Co' = at the same time, 'incidence' = happening. Nothing more, nothing less. It does not mean 'unexplained circumstances' or 'having some mystical or spiritual significance' - the word for those two is 'mysterious', not 'coincidence', check your dictionary.

The number of events taking place on Earth is so huge as to be incalculable, it's a mathematical and chronological inevitability that some will occur coincidentally. Nothing whatsoever to do with explanations or lack of same. Or even Angels. :0)

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Peace
Date: 22 May 04 - 11:35 AM

I seldom argue about religious beliefs--my own or those of others--because it's a personal thing to people. 'For instance' is not proof. And maybe therein is the beauty: I don't need proof for my beliefs. That may make me short-sighted in the view of some folks, but that doesn't matter to me.

I was nine when I died on an operating table. My recollection is of a bright, pure-white light, and of traveling along the light very, very fast. I felt a 'presence' or 'nearness' to something. I don't know what it was, but I felt it was good. My mother determined later with the doctor that I had been given too much gas, and the crew doing the operation worked real hard to get me back here. Truthfully, I was happy where I was, where ever THAT was.

Anecdotes don't prove anything to anyone. But then, I am not trying to prove anything to anyone. It happened, and I know it. That works for me.

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Ebbie
Date: 22 May 04 - 11:36 AM

The interesting thing, Strollin' Johnny, is that when one gets to the place of relying on 'coincidence', it happens much mure frequently. I have a lot of experience with coincidence.

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 22 May 04 - 11:42 AM

Jeez Ebbie, how can anyone possibly rely on coincidence? It's very unpredictability makes it unreliable! :0)

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Peace
Date: 22 May 04 - 11:45 AM

But if we know it's unreliable, then we know we can count on that. If you can count on it, it ain't unreliable.

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Bill D
Date: 22 May 04 - 12:06 PM

as to folks being saved by angels from cars going over cliffs..etc...

I read regularly about folks who were NOT so lucky...or about one survivor of a plane crash where 127 did NOT survive. You see my point... Are there only a few angels who work miracles? Are there only a few folks worthy? Do angels work on their own, or does God send instructions? Theological questions abound!

The guardian angel system seems awfully capricious and random. You'll excuse me, I hope, if I just shrug and allow as how I'd better just watch my driving, as I doubt I can "rely on coincidence" OR angels....

But-- I realize my sceptical ramblings are not likely to change any minds of those who take comforts from the stories or have personal 'experiences' of inexplicible "luck". We are all wired differently.

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Amos
Date: 22 May 04 - 12:41 PM

Coincidence, really, is kind of a meaningless word -- it simply means two events are co-temporal and says nothing about connection between them. I would hazard a guess that any two events that involve the same people (as in the examples above) have more connection that the term allows.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Ebbie
Date: 22 May 04 - 01:23 PM

Bill D, I gave those two examples only as two that I myself was told. I didn't particularly like the young man- I thought he was closed minded, pretty full of himself and somewhat arrogant. (One time I heard him telling someone about a parade he had seen on television the night before. He said, I couldn't believe it- they were carrying Satan's signs! I said, Jeff, I saw that parade too. That had nothing to do with Satan- those signs were 'NO NUKE' signs. He said, Oh, "Ebbie", don't be naive.)

The girl who wrecked her car is the daughter of a dear friend of mine.

As for relying on 'coincidence', that's my whole point. It is not coincidental at all, except in happening at the same time, if you're talking about it being meaningless. My experience has taught me that when one focuses on a need, the need gets answered. How or by whom, I don't know.

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Peace
Date: 22 May 04 - 01:45 PM

I think, Bill D, that many people accept the notion of angels because the circumstances are such that someone should have been killed, but wasn't. However, as you say, one should tend to one's driving also. I have been 'saved' on a number of occasions, but I wouldn't expect anyone to understand that I feel the difference between the hand of 'luck' and the intervention of 'something else'. A few occasions were luck, because I didn't feel the 'something else'.

I do see your point, and I can't reasonably expect you to see mine. In the words of the old hippie that I am, that's cool.

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Amos
Date: 22 May 04 - 02:44 PM

I submit that a large measure of so-called "angelic" intercession is actually the actuation of one's own greater abilities long abandoned, made possible briefly because of necessity or a lowering of the guard.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Peace
Date: 22 May 04 - 02:52 PM

Yep, that too.

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 May 04 - 02:56 PM

Dying isn't so bad. Why consider that those who died weren't also "helped" by some Angel? We may all be helped by Angels, but in different ways, that's all, according to our various needs and purposes. I expect to die some day, and I expect it will happen at the right time. All well and good. Dying will allow me to trade in this old body on a whole new adventure and a new way of being. How can that be bad?

And as far as I'm concerned there are no coincidences whatsoever. Not one. It's a mythological notion based on inadequate information when people say that something is a coincidence.

What there is, though, is this: free will. With it you can shape your next set of "coincidences" if you choose to. That means you are in control.

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Bill D
Date: 22 May 04 - 03:15 PM

"Why consider that those who died weren't also "helped" by some Angel?"

...ummm....right....when you get to the next life, please ask them if they appreciated that particular brand of 'help', when they thought they were on the way to their son's wedding--etc...

Besides, I remember this old beer commercial which said. "You only go around once, so grab for all the Gusto you can get.." (Coors, I think..*grin*)...I know that they wouldn't mislead me, so I have always assumed that I DON'T get another body and a new way of being...Still, dying isn't so bad, as you say...if you have done your best with this life.

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Peace
Date: 22 May 04 - 04:05 PM

That is predicated on the assumption that folks will mind being dead. It don't look too attractive from THIS side of things, but who knows about how it will look fom the OTHER side of things. And Bill, don't take away all hope for me. I NEED a new body.

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Amos
Date: 22 May 04 - 04:30 PM

Wal, Bill, ya gotta consider the source, eff'n ya see what I mean. It probably isn't good sense to get your spiritual guidance from some wrinkled ole pree-vert who plays with choirboys, but mebbe getting them from a beer company is a notch futhah south, eh??

Brucie: you shall have one, too, when the time is roight.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 22 May 04 - 04:33 PM

Having studied some of your references given and found other references on line...I have to conclude that Angels really do exist although it becomes obvious that certain people don't recognise them as angels. Be Blessed.

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Peace
Date: 22 May 04 - 04:35 PM

God, I have a sick joke for that one, Amos.

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Pogo
Date: 22 May 04 - 04:39 PM

hmmm...well Bill D to add my thoughts on that :)

I believe people's poor choices can also affect the length of another's life and that all lives are part of a greater pattern that we on the earth simply cannot comprehend at the moment. This is part of the human experience. We make choices and there are natural consequences for those choices that are integrated into this pattern because there must be balance in all things. Partly Fate and partly Free Will, that is what it is to be mortal.

I don't think those who are saved by angels are necessarily more worthy than anyone else but perhaps there is some reason why they are still alive. I think too those who died unexpectedly were not necessarily abandoned by angels or God either. Someone has to be there for the transition into the next life because so many times in this cruel world, people die alone and forgotten.

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 22 May 04 - 05:33 PM

Amen Pogo

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: freda underhill
Date: 22 May 04 - 07:29 PM

If, when we die, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, then, doesn't there have to be something perceiving that nothing? otherwise, there is no nothing.

I have experienced being outside my body, while still being conscious and perceiving. at the time my body was limp and non functioning, and i was outside it, alive, free, joyful and remarkably detached from my own personality and identity.

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Bill D
Date: 22 May 04 - 10:55 PM

"... doesn't there have to be something perceiving that nothing?"

nope--unless you use an already anthromorphic definition of "nothing"...like 'the absence of something which used to be here'...

***NOTHING***, tightly defined, is just that--nothing! How could something be observing 'nothing' without being aware of itself, and thus.....well, you get the idea.

In the introduction to Husserl's Phenomenology, he notes that the logically primary philosophical question is "Why is there something rather than nothing?" It is US who ask questions about what kinds of 'something' there can be, and there seems to a common perception that if something is named linguistically, it must exist.

It is a most interesting trick of self-aware, concious beings that they can weave semantic patterns about 'entities' that they have never seen and can't even explain how they might exist.

Read "The Urantia Book" or "Ohaspe" sometime, and be inundated with multiple levels of ethereal, cosmic nomenclature about stuff which relies on patterns of words, rather than real concepts, to create its spell.....

..."Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to perceive"
                  Bill D. 2004 (sorry, Sir Walter)

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 23 May 04 - 01:23 AM

Ebbie me lass, "It is not coincidental at all, except in happening at the same time" - what other meaning of 'coincidence' is there other than 'happening at the same time'? That's the precise meaning of the word!

And the new definition of 'frustration' is 'the effect brought about on others by people who attribute a meaning to a word other than its real meaning, and then use the word to gainsay someone who uses the word in its true sense' !!!

:0)

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Ebbie
Date: 23 May 04 - 01:56 AM

Strollin' Johnny, that is the true frustration of language. I used 'coincidence' as some others in this thread used it, in order to point out that coincidence is what my experience was not, except that I grant my need and its answer coincided.   My belief is, as Little Hawk said above, that what we call coincidence is very often not happenstance at all.

I'm not sure I have made it clear yet. You want me to have another go at it? :)

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 23 May 04 - 02:14 AM

OK Ebbie, so we agree on what coincidence is (I think). So explain why your need and its answer was so unarguably not a coincidence please! What's so strange about bumping into someone you haven't seen for a while? On Friday just gone, I was describing, to my current work-colleagues, an office and some former colleagues I worked with in 1968 and who I haven't seen since then. Lo and behold, that very evening I encountered one of those colleagues from 1968 - 37 years since I last saw her, not just a few months - but I'm not scuttling around thinking I've had a visitation from Gabriel, we just happened to be at the same place on the same night! It was a coincidence, in a world of umpteen thousand million inhabitants coincidences are bound to happen, no mysterious spirits fluttering around the ether, it's just maths! If anyone doesn't see that simple fact, they need help.
:0)

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Ebbie
Date: 23 May 04 - 02:53 AM

HELLLLPP! ;~)

"I was describing, to my current work-colleagues, an office and some former colleagues I worked with in 1968 and who I haven't seen since then. Lo and behold, that very evening I encountered one of those colleagues from 1968 - 37 years since I last saw her, not just a few months "

Ah, but you see, Strollin' Johnny, it is entirely possible that your talking about your former colleagues that day when you hadn't seen them in so many years was in response to some nudging, whether because they were thinking of you or whether that there is some need there that you don't yet know about. (Keep us posted!)

As for my friend's fortuitous rescue of me- on the face of it it isn't so remarkable: We live in the same town of 30,000, we don't keep track of where the other is, etc. Keep in mind, though, that it was 7:30 in the morning; he lives in the Valley which has its own stores and other facilities; he doesn't often come downtown (On the phone later I asked him just why he was downtown at that hour, and he said, It's a long story. I'll tell you sometime.) Suffice it to say it had nothing to do with me.

I agree that one incident isn't convincing, but that kind of thing happens very frequently to me and I honor it. I have learned to try not to resist the nudge - and the more I see it happening, the more often it happens. It happens both ways, incidentally. Sometimes I am the one who responds.

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 23 May 04 - 02:59 AM

Woooooooo, spookeeeee!
Sorry Ebbie, we just have to agree to differ on this one! I guess I'm not a deep-thinker and I find your logic hard to go with, but I'm big, old and ugly enough to know that I'm not always right!
Cheers M'Dear!
Johnny :0)

PS what are you doing up at this time - don't you guys ever go to bed?!!

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: freda underhill
Date: 23 May 04 - 05:04 AM

Bill D

either there is consciousness, or there is no consciousness. If there is nothing to perceive no consciousness, then there is only consciousness.

freda

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: *daylia*
Date: 23 May 04 - 07:58 AM

either there is consciousness, or there is no consciousness. If there is nothing to perceive no consciousness, then there is only consciousness.

To make much ado about nothing, the concept of "nothing" is very important to Qabalists (an ancient form of Hebrew mysticism popularized by the Golden Dawn in the late 1800's).

Qabalists use a structure called the Tree of Life to model both the macrocosm of the Universe and the microcosm of the human being. The Tree of Life is understood to have arisen from nothingness -- specifically, from "three inscrutable qualities of nothingness that, in the dawn of pre-creation, had somehow ended up focusing (or contracting) to a point [that is, to a state of infinite potentiality]".

Qabalists call these 'three inscrutable qualities of nothingness' "Veils", and dubbed them

AIN - nothing that is so nothing that it negates the concept of nothing as the absence of something (in other words we can't even say "It is nothing" because there is no "it" and there is no "is" in this kind of nothing;

AIN SOPH - Limitless nothing (Nothing defined). There is now an "It" in the statement "It is nothing".

AIN SOPH AUR - Limitless Light (Positive emptiness). There is now an "It" and an "is" in the statement "It is nothing".

So as you can see (probably with the help of a couple buckets of coffee), according to the Qabalists everything in the Universe - including angels! - arose out of these three inscrutable Veils of Nothing.


Wanna make Something out of it?

;-)   daylia


PS quotes are from Lon Milo DuQuette's Understanding Aleistar Crowley's Thoth Tarot"

oops, now I've mentioned Crowley -- that name oughta have more than a few of you heading for the hills -- sorry, but it IS a great book!

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: GUEST,Guy
Date: 23 May 04 - 11:33 AM

Of course there are angels and well documented at that. Start with your Bible!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 23 May 04 - 02:41 PM

Georgiansilver - now look what you started! But then that's what you intended all along isn't it you bugger! (LOL) :0) :0)
We'll have a laugh over a beer tomorrow night.
J :0)

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 23 May 04 - 03:44 PM

Shucks John, you say such nice things......two beers was that???

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Bill D
Date: 23 May 04 - 04:06 PM

freda....I can say only....."HUH??"

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Rasener
Date: 23 May 04 - 05:28 PM

Aston Villa have been saved from certain death by Juan Pablo Angel

god rest his soul :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Peace
Date: 23 May 04 - 05:37 PM

Oh, what a tangled weave we web
When we awake to find we're dead."

Not quite, Sir W and Bill D, but cloooossssse.

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: GUEST,Richard
Date: 23 May 04 - 06:20 PM

In North Devon UK some years ago some people were saved from a runaway tractor at a Christian Centre..I think the village was called Lee. Don't know more than that but saw it on Tele

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 24 May 04 - 03:02 AM

A 19-year-old man went over a cliff at the Oregon coast in his pickup. The truck was demolished but he was unhurt except for a small cut on his forehead. He claimed that when he went through the window he was caught by an angel. He said he saw the arms.

The 16-year-old daughter of a friend of mine overturned the family car on a narrow, twisting road and was unhurt. She told her mother that an angel held up the car enough for her to climb out from under it.


The "angels" would have done a better job if they had grabbed hold of the steering wheels and kept the cars on the road in the first place


Doug C

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: GUEST,Dave C
Date: 24 May 04 - 06:08 AM

Angels are those women who work in hospitals...nurses....gone quiet about them being underpaid lately has it not??

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: *daylia*
Date: 24 May 04 - 08:35 AM

Where are the Angels? I think that picture depicts very well the nature of "angels" and the work they do.

The "angels" would have done a better job if they had grabbed hold of the steering wheels and kept the cars on the road in the first place

Well, Doug, maybe you could coach the angels a bit on how to do a better job helping people, while at the same time never interfering with their choices or their free will - and remaining "incognito".

Sounds like a pretty difficult .... and thankless .... job.

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Wolfgang
Date: 24 May 04 - 10:12 AM

there are no coincidences whatsoever
I have a lot of experience with coincidence.

As several have tried to point out, some uses here of the word 'coincidence' are extremely nonstandard which makes discussion difficult.

C. G. Jung ("Synchronicity: An acausal principle") has used the term 'synchronicity' for meaningful coincidences. Though synchronicity is just Greek for coincidence, Jung's use is now standard:

...synchronicity as the simultaneous occurrence of a psychological event (e.g. a dream, vision, fantasy or idea) with one (or more) external events in life, which appear to be meaningfully connected.

Deplorably, in the last years, some have dropped the 'meaningful' before 'coincidences' and use the word coincidences alone in a way others have used synchronicity. The misunderstandings in several posts here can be traced to this lack of differentiation in terminology.

While I scratch my nose, a Siberian worker has died from pneumonia, a Peruvian woman has creamed in labour, an Ethiopian child has died etc. That's coincidence in the original meaning and not even Jung would call that a meaningful coincidence.

There once was a song by an Austrian songwriter (A. Brauer) telling how many people died all over the world while he was having his breakfast. A whole big town it was while he was manging his Kipferl.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Ebbie
Date: 24 May 04 - 11:03 AM

Yes, Wolfgang, I too have creamed in labor a few times.

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Peace
Date: 24 May 04 - 11:37 AM

It may be coincidence that it gets colder when the sun goes down; however, I doubt it. But, just because science or math can predict something doesn't mean it happens all the time. If I provide the following: 2 4 6 8 and ask what comes next, most people would say 10. They might be right. The guy that answers 10 plus or minus X (with X being unknown) might also be right. Science can't prove or disprove angels because science has never studied angels. Comes down to a matter of belief. And I believe there are angels. I live in a simple universe.

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 24 May 04 - 11:51 AM

What if a bunch of crows were sitting around one day arguing whether or not stocks and bonds exist? Or if a bunch of woodchucks were arguing the plausibility of aircraft that exceed the speed of sound. Do you follow my analogy?

Given their normal levels of perception and their normal spheres of operation they would simply not be able to prove the matter one way or another.

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Amos
Date: 24 May 04 - 12:04 PM

I would just add to your bright post, LH, that we are discussing your (or my) impression of crows and woodchucks. As to what they see or feel, or how they interact, really, it is hard to pin it down; the perceptic set and the frequencies they come in on may be wholly different, despite certain similarities like bi-ocularity, from what homosaps sense.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Cluin
Date: 24 May 04 - 12:05 PM

Yep. And we don't really give a rodent's rectum about the philosophical conundrums rodents and corvids have.

I expect angels might feel the same way, if they exist.

Dying is built into the program when life comes along. Why would you think so-called higher powers and hanging around in the ether to prevent it? Haven't they got some kind of celestial paperwork to get on with or something?

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Peace
Date: 24 May 04 - 12:08 PM

It's interesting that science chose to study gravity (now both the weak and strong 'force') without having proof that gravity as we perceive it really existed. Yes, I know objects are attracted to each other in a given mathematical ratio. However, in space, very far from any other objects, how would one go about proving the existence of gravity? Let's take the case of a steel ball bearing drifting somewhere out beyond beyond. It would never be able to prove gravity. I imagine that sooner or later it might wonder what held itself together, and it might arrive at a conclusion. It would likely never deem itself to be three dimensional, because it's round. Maybe Nth dimensional. When we met that ball bearing, how would we ever be able to understand each other's reasoning? Likely, we wouldn't. Besides, if angels don't really exist for some peopl--why are we discussing them?

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: freda underhill
Date: 24 May 04 - 12:22 PM

.... from Zen n the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance....

I go on. "For example, it seems completely natural to presume that gravitation and the law of gravitation existed before Isaac Newton. It would sound nutty to think that until the seventeenth century there was no gravity."          "Of course."

"So when did this law start? Has it always existed?" John is frowning, wondering what I am getting at.

"What I'm driving at," I say, "is the notion that before the beginning of the earth, before the sun and the stars were formed, before the primal generation of anything, the law of gravity existed."

"Sure."

"Sitting there, having no mass of its own, no energy of its own, not in anyone's mind because there wasn't anyone, not in space because there was no space either, not anywhere...this law of gravity still existed?"      Now John seems not so sure.

"If that law of gravity existed," I say, "I honestly don't know what a thing has to do to be nonexistent. It seems to me that law of gravity has passed every test of nonexistence there is. You cannot think of a single attribute of nonexistence that that law of gravity didn't have. Or a single scientific attribute of existence it did have. And yet it is still `common sense' to believe that it existed."

John says, "I guess I'd have to think about it."

"Well, I predict that if you think about it long enough you will find yourself going round and round and round and round until you finally reach only one possible, rational, intelligent conclusion. The law of gravity and gravity itself did not exist before Isaac Newton. No other conclusion makes sense.

"And what that means," I say before he can interrupt, "and what that means is that that law of gravity exists nowhere except in people's heads! It's a ghost! We are all of us very arrogant and conceited about running down other people's ghosts but just as ignorant and barbaric and superstitious about our own."

"Why does everybody believe in the law of gravity then?"
"Mass hypnosis. In a very orthodox form known as `education."'
"You mean the teacher is hypnotizing the kids into believing the law of gravity?"
"Sure."
"That's absurd."

"You've heard of the importance of eye contact in the classroom? Every educationist emphasizes it. No educationist explains it."
John shakes his head and pours me another drink. He puts his hand over his mouth and in a mock aside says to Sylvia, "You know, most of the time he seems like such a normal guy."

I counter, "That's the first normal thing I've said in weeks. The rest of the time I'm feigning twentieth-century lunacy just like you are. So as not to draw attention to myself.

"But I'll repeat it for you," I say. "We believe the disembodied words of Sir Isaac Newton were sitting in the middle of nowhere billions of years before he was born and that magically he discovered these words. They were always there, even when they applied to nothing. Gradually the world came into being and then they applied to it. In fact, those words themselves were what formed the world. That, John, is ridiculous.

"The problem, the contradiction the scientists are stuck with, is that of mind. Mind has no matter or energy but they can't escape its predominance over everything they do. Logic exists in the mind. Numbers exist only in the mind. I don't get upset when scientists say that ghosts exist in the mind. It's that only that gets me. Science is only in your mind too, it's just that that doesn't make it bad. Or ghosts either."

They are just looking at me so I continue: "Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Laws of logic, of mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts. The whole blessed thing is a human invention, including the idea that it isn't a human invention. The world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination. It's all a ghost, and in antiquity was so recognized as a ghost, the whole blessed world we live in. It's run by ghosts. We see what we see because these ghosts show it to us, ghosts of Moses and Christ and the Buddha, and Plato, and Descartes, and Rousseau and Jefferson and Lincoln, on and on and on. Isaac Newton is a very good ghost. One of the best. Your common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past. Ghosts and more ghosts. Ghosts trying to find their place among the living."

John looks too much in thought to speak. But Sylvia is excited. "Where do you get all these ideas?" she asks.
.........

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 24 May 04 - 12:23 PM

OY! Here we gooooo again! I bet if there ARE angels, they'd be rolling their eyes at this thread!

Come on folks, enough with the arguing which you all love to do so much...MORE STORIES AND SITINGS!

Then again, maybe brucie is right, and they only get to visit us during their coffee breaks..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 24 May 04 - 12:30 PM

Ebbie - what a picture that conjures up! I'm sure 'creamed' was actually 'screamed' but it lost something big-style in the translation! Anyway, I wish you no further creaming! (LOL)
Johnny :0)

Subject: RE: BS: Are there really Angels?
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 24 May 04 - 12:32 PM

Brucie - Excreta Tauri Cerebrum Vincit.
My last words on t'subject (I promise!)
J :0) :0)