Chapter 10 Chapter 7: The Devil-Infested World

Many human cultures teach us that God is watching over us and directing the course of our destiny.Other, more malevolent entities are responsible for the evil existence.Both things, whether considered natural or supernatural, real or imagined, serve human needs.Even if they are all imagined, people feel better when they believe them.In an era when traditional religion is despised by science, isn't it natural to wrap the ancient gods and demons in a scientific cloak and call them aliens? In ancient times, people generally believed in ghosts.People don't think ghosts and gods are supernatural things, they think they are natural.Hesiod mentions them from time to time.Socrates said that his philosophical inspiration was the result of the enlightenment of human benevolence.His teacher, Diotima of Mantinia, told him (in Plato's Treatises): "Everything that is a ghost is between God and man, and there is no direct connection between God and man." He also said: "Only through ghosts and gods can there be communication and dialogue between humans and gods, whether you are awake or sleeping."

Plato, Socrates' favorite student, believed that gods and ghosts played an important role: Without being endowed with transcendental abilities, human nature alone cannot handle various human affairs.He said that human nature is also filled with arrogance and fallibility.  … We see cattle as cattle and sheep as sheep, but we ourselves are the superior race and we rule over them.The benevolent God, with his love for mankind, sent us gods and ghosts. They are high-level races. They are very leisurely and happy, no less than us humans. They are taking care of us and giving us peace. And respect, order and justice endure, and they make the tribes happy and united.

He firmly denied that ghosts were the origin of evil, and portrayed Eros, the patron saint of sexuality, as a ghost rather than a god. "Both human and not human", "neither good nor bad".But all later Platonists, including those Neo-Platonists who were strongly influenced by Christian philosophy, believed that some ghosts were good and others evil.But Aristotle, Plato's famous pupil, went from one extreme to the other when he seriously considered the idea that dreams were made by ghosts.Plutarch and Porphyry believed that the ghosts that filled outer space came from the moon.

The early Christian church fathers were eager to distinguish themselves from "pagan" belief systems, although they absorbed Neoplatonist ideas from a culture that dazzled them.They taught that all pagan religions consisted of worshiping ideas of ghosts and men, both of which were misunderstood as gods.When St. Paul complains about the wickedness of the high temple in Ephesians 6:14, he does not mention government corruption, but the demons in the high temple: We should not oppose human nature, what we should oppose is the system of privilege ruling the country, against power, against the rulers of the dark forces in this world, and against the spiritual evil in the high temple.

From the beginning, they deliberately did not use the word ghost too much, but used a poetic metaphor to describe the evil things in people's minds. St. Augustine was deeply troubled by the question of ghosts, citing the popular pagan view of the time: "The gods occupy the highest place, man the lowest, and the devil in the middle.... Their bodies are immortal, but their minds and emotions In the eighth book of The City of God, Augustine accepts this ancient tradition, substituting God for God, and he emphasizes the characteristic of ghosts, namely, that they are all without exception. are evil, they have no saving qualities, they are a source of evil in soul and body.He called them "unreal animals .They may claim to pass messages between God and man, disguising themselves as God's angels, but this disguise is a trap that lures us to our destruction.They can pretend to be anything, and they are knowledgeable—the word "demon" is Greek for "knowledge"—especially knowledge of the physical world.Even so, they lack charity.They tormented "the imprisoned and gullible minds of men," Tertullian wrote: "dwelling in the heavens, with the stars, and with the clouds."

In the 11th century, the influential Byzantine theologian, philosopher, and less than righteous statesman Michael Buserus described the devil in these terms: These animals exist in our own lives, they are emotional because they are immersed in the vast ocean of emotion, and their ascension is as remarkable as their status and rank.Because of this, they are also governed and bound by emotions. Around 1270, a Scottish male abbot wrote a complete treatise on ghosts, rich in first-hand material: he saw (only when his eyes were closed) countless The wicked devils of the house hummed around his and other minds like dust in a heap of rubbish.Despite the wave after wave of rationalist, Persian, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim thought, despite the constant incitement of revolutionary social, political, and philosophical ideas, their existence and main characteristics, even the name of the devil It remained the same from Hesiod to the Crusades.

The devil, "the mighty one in the sky," descends from the sky to have illicit sex with women.Augustine believed that witches were the product of forbidden sexual intercourse.In the Middle Ages, as in ancient times before it, almost everyone believed in this legend.Devils are called monsters or descended angels.Those who seduce women by means of demons are called incubi, and those who seduce men are called incubi.Some nuns reported that in some dazed state they felt that something very similar happened in a dream with the confessor or the bishop. A chronicler in the 15th century wrote: "The nuns woke up the next day to find themselves defiled, as if they had had sexual intercourse with a man." In ancient China, there are similar records, but in In the boudoir, not in the convent.Presbyterian religious writer Richard Baxter, in his The Necessity of the World Spirit (1691), argued that so many women reported having incubus experiences that "it would be unreasonable to deny such a thing".

When they are seduced, they feel the incubus as a weight on the dreamer's chest.Whatever the Latin meaning of the word mare, in Old English it meant incubi, and nightmare originally meant a devil who lays on the breasts of sleepers and torments them with dreams.In Athanasius' The Life of St. Anthony (written around 360 AD), the devil is described as something that enters and exits locked rooms at will. 1400 years later, the French scholar Ludovic Sinistari assured us in his book "The Devil" that devils can pass through walls. From antiquity to the late Middle Ages, the objective reality of the devil was almost unquestionable.Maimonides denied their authenticity.But the vast majority of rabbis believe in Dibouk.In the few cases I have found even suggesting that the devil is an inner product, born of our minds, an early church father, Abbapimon, was once asked:

"How does the devil fight with us?" The godfather of Portman asked: "The devil fights with you? Our own will becomes the devil, and it is these devils who attack us." Medieval attitudes to incubus were influenced by Mycrobius' Commentary on Scipio's Dream, written in the 4th century.The book was reprinted several times before the European Enlightenment.Mycrobius describes phantoms (phantasma) seen "in waking and sleeping hours."The dreamer "pictures" the ghost as a carnivore.Mycrobius had a habit of skepticism which was generally unknown in the medieval period in which he lived.

The devil's obsession with people began to become more and more intense.During this period, the Pope's encyclical 1484 (time of Innocent VIII) states: We have heard that members of both sexes do not shy away from their having sex with evil angels, incubus. Incubus use their spells, spells, enchantments, and conjuring to suffocate and strangle women so that they cannot be born.and many other disasters. As a result of this passage, the organized persecution, torture, and execution of large numbers of "witches" began throughout Europe.They were considered guilty, according to Augustine, of "disturbing the unaware world by immorality."Despite the impartial use of the term "members of both sexes" in its characteristic language, it was primarily girls and adult women who were persecuted.

Many major new denominations arose in the centuries that followed, and while they differed from the Catholic Church, their basic views were the same.Even the likes of Desiderius Erasmus and Thomas More believed in witches.John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church, said: "To renounce witchcraft is in fact to renounce the Bible." The eminent jurist William Blackstone asserted in his Essay on the Laws of England (1765) : "The denial of the possibility of witchcraft and magic, and indeed of their actual existence, is the categorical denial of the word God which occurs at great length in the New and Old Testaments." Innocent commented: "Our dear young men Henry Kramer and James Springer have been appointed by the Pope as Inquisitors to inquire about the wickedness of these heretics." If the wicked and the most wicked go unpunished", then the souls of all living beings will be punished forever. The Pope instructed Kramer and Springer to write a comprehensive analysis using all the theories of the second half of the fifteenth century.With exhaustive exposition and reference to the Bible and the theories of ancient and modern scholars, they wrote The Witch Law, aptly said to be one of the most terrifying documents in human history.Thomas Eddy, in his book Candle in the Dark, denounced the document as "wicked doctrines and inventions", "terrible lies and impossible decrees", whose function was to use to "conceal from the sky their incomparable cruelty".What does "punishment" refer to?It simply means that as long as you are charged with witchcraft, you are a wizard.A reliable means of substantiating the validity of accusations is torture.The defendant has no rights.Those accused of crimes also have no chance of defence.It was never considered that the charges might be motivated by some nefarious purpose, such as jealousy, vengeance, or the greed of the judges to enrich themselves, who often confiscated the property of the accused.This technical manual for the thugs also describes the appropriate methods of torture to expel the devil from the witches prior to the execution procedure.As long as the "Law of Punishment" is in hand, the Pope's efforts to punish witches are guaranteed, and the Inquisition judges spread all over Europe overnight. The witch hunt quickly turned into an expensive scam.The accused and their relatives bear all the costs of the investigation, trial, and execution of the sentence, in addition to hiring private investigators to follow up on the witch, buying the guards drinks, feasting on her judge, and sending someone to another city Various expenses such as inviting more experienced thugs, buying firewood, tar, and noose.Every time a witch is sentenced to be burned to death, a bonus will be given to the members who participate in the punishment activities.If the convicted witch had property, the property was divided between the church and the government.When this practice of punishing witches was legally and morally sanctioned, numerous cases of murderers and thieves became commonplace.When a sprawling bureaucracy emerges to serve it, their attention shifts from poor witches and old crones to middle class and wealthy men and women. The more people were forced to confess to witchcraft under torture, the more difficult it was to keep the whole thing going as a mere unrealistic fantasy.When each "witch" was beaten into a trick and forced to drag others into the water, the number of witches increased rapidly.These established "terrible proofs that the devil is still alive" were later used again in the Salem Witch Trials in the United States.In an age of credulity, the most dubious evidence is accepted with seriousness and caution.This caused tens of thousands of witches to gather in Place de France on the "Sabbath".Twelve thousand of them fled to Newfoundland, and the fleeing crowd made the sky dark and desolate. The "Bible" advises us: "You should not harm witches, let them live a good life." A large number of women were burned to death.When instruments of torture were first admired by priests, the most terrible punishments were often applied to accused persons, old or young.After Innocent died in 1492, blood transfusions (which resulted in the deaths of three boys) and sucking the milk of a nursing mother were unsuccessfully attempted to keep him alive after he was effectively dead.His mistress and child were devastated. In Britain, witch-finders, also known as 'watchers', had easy access to work, receiving a handsome bonus for capturing a girl or woman who was executed by a court of law.No one warned them that they should pay attention to the evidence when accusing others.Generally, they only judge whether they are witches based on the "devil's mark"-scars, birthmarks or blemishes. When they stab a woman's body with a needle, she is neither injured nor bleeds, then she can be judged to be a witch. They often use subtle techniques to make it appear as if the needle has been driven deep into the witch's flesh.When there are no obvious scars, they say, "invisible signs" will suffice.On the gallows, a mid-seventeenth-century watcher "confessed that he had killed more than 220 English and Scotch women in this way, at 20 shillings each." In witch trials, mitigating evidence and defendant testimony were ignored.In either case, it is almost impossible for the witch's alibi to be provided.The requirements for evidence have distinctive features.In more than one case, for example, husbands testified that their wives were sleeping next to them when they were accused of playing with the devil on the witch's Sabbath.But the archbishop patiently explained that it was not his wife that the husband had in his arms, but the devil.Husbands never imagined that their perceptions could outstrip satanic magic.Beautiful young women had to be thrown into the flames. There are people who are highly sexual and misogynistic - people who are more likely to be found in sexually repressed, male-dominated societies where inquisitors typically start from remaining celibate Chosen from among the living priestly classes.At trial, much attention was focused on the duration and number of orgasms when the defendant, suspected of being a witch, had intercourse with the devil or a demon (although Augustine had established that "we cannot call the devil an adulterer"), and the devil's The nature of the "members" ("ruthless" by all descriptions) went up.According to Ludovic Sinistrari's 1700 book, "the devil's mark is usually on the chest or genitals."As a result, accused witches had their pubic hair shaved and their genitals carefully examined by specially assigned male judges.During the murder of Joan, a 20-year-old girl from Arcadia, when her skirt was set on fire, the Rouen executioner extinguished the flames so that onlookers could see "all the secrets that a woman can and should have." up". A chronicle tells us some statistics of those who died in the sea of ​​fire only in the small German city of Würzburg in 1598. These descriptions reproduce the reality of human beings in those years: Senator's waiter, called Green; elderly Kanzler; tailor's fat wife; Mengeddorf's cook; a stranger; a strange woman; Paulnach, councilor, the fattest citizen of Würzburg ; the old blacksmith of the court; an old woman; a little girl, 9 or 10 years old; a younger girl, the former's sister; Goebel's child, the most beautiful girl in Würzburg; a student fluent in many languages; Two boys from Minster, each about twelve years old; Staple's youngest daughter; the woman who kept the bridge castle; an old woman; the youngest son of the city council executive; Knazer's wife ; A butcher; Dr. Schultz's baby girl; Swartz, the priest of Hach... This kind of thing continues to happen.Certain incidents received special sympathetic attention: "Falckenberg's youngest daughter was secretly executed and burned." Twenty-eight such incidents occurred in that small city in one year alone. Public executions have an average of 4 to 6 victims each time.This is just a sampling of the various forms of executions taking place across Europe.No one knows how many people were killed in total.Maybe hundreds of thousands, maybe millions.Those who take responsibility for the prosecution, torture, sentencing, execution, and justification of these executions are open-minded.This question should be asked of them. They cannot make mistakes.Their confessions of witchcraft could not have been utter nonsense, or they were trying to satisfy the inquisitors that they would not be tortured further.Witch trial judge Pierre de Lanclair explained this in his 1612 book "Explaining the Infidelity of Wicked Angels": "In these events the Catholic Church was guilty of burning witches. committed great crimes. However, the possibility of events was increased by those who attacked the Catholic Church, so the Catholic Church committed great crimes based on the facts themselves (ipso facto). In the course of some events, Those who criticized the burning of witches were punished, and some protested by self-immolation. Inquisitors and torturers were serving God. They were saving souls. They stopped the devil from wreaking havoc. Witchcraft was certainly not the only crime punishable by torture and burning.Apostasy was a more serious sin, punished mercilessly by both Protestants and Protestants alike. In the 16th century, the scholar William Tyndale had the audacity to consider translating the New Testament into English.But if people can actually read the Bible in their own language, rather than the sacred Latin, then they can form their own independent religious views, they will form their own personal channel of communication with God.This poses a challenge to the security of the status of Roman Catholic priests.When Tyndale attempted to publish his translations, he was constantly harassed and hunted throughout Europe.Finally, he was finally captured and hanged, with the extra penalty of having his body burned at the stake.His translation of the New Testament (which became the basis for the accurate King James translation a century later) was searched door to door by the army, and Christians piously defended Christianity by keeping other Christians from understanding the meaning of what Christ said .This mode of thought and absolute belief that knowledge should be gained through torture and death will not do any favors for those accused of witchcraft. Witch-burning, a feature of Western culture, became less and less apparent from the 16th century onwards, apart from occasional political influences.A woman and her nine-year-old daughter have been hanged in Britain's last execution for witches.Their crime was to provoke a storm by taking off their stockings.In our time witches and monsters are often to be found in children's games.Exorcism remains a major activity of the Roman Catholic Church and other churches.Worshipers of one faith still accuse the worship of other faiths of evil sorcery.We still use the word "hell" (pandemonium) (meaning the place where demons live).A mad and violent person was still said to be a devil (before the eighteenth century, insanity was commonly attributed to supernatural causes, and even insomnia was considered a devil's punishment).More than half of Americans told pollsters they "believe" in the existence of the devil, and 10 percent claimed to have spoken to ghosts, something Martin Luther said he communicated with regularly. In 1992, in a book called "Preparing for War" called "The Mental Warfare Handbook," Rebecca Brown told us that miscarriages and extramarital affairs "invite the devil almost without exception."Meditation, yoga, and martial arts all show loyalty to Christianity, and they will be led to believe in ghosts and gods; rock music is not "accidental", but the result of Satan himself's careful plan to control human minds.Sometimes "the one you love is haunted by the devil and doesn't know it".Devil worship remains an important part of many devout beliefs to this day. So what exactly did the devil do?In The Law of Punishment, Kramer and Springer argue: "The devil is busy with collecting people's sperm, which they then use to transfer themselves to interfere with the normal sexual intercourse and conception of people." Medieval by the devil Artificial insemination dates back at least to St. Thomas Aquinas, who tells us in On the Trinity: "The devils can transfer the sperm which they collect, and inject it into the bodies of other men." His Companion St. Bonaventure described in more detail: the incubus "gradually took possession of the men and absorbed their sperm; A male incubator pours sperm into a woman's ovary." The same is true for the products of human-ghost mating.When these things grow up, the devil comes to visit them.A way of inter-generational and inter-species conversion of sexual union is produced.We also remember that these beings were known for their good deeds, and they actually lived in the heavens. There is no mention of spaceships in these legends.But there is most of the main content of the alien abductions we are talking about today, which includes those non-human beings who live in the sky and are very interested in sex. They can walk through walls and communicate telepathically. Conduct reproductive tests.If we don't believe that the devil actually exists, how do we understand this strange belief that the entire western world (including the supposedly wisest among us) embraces, reinforced by the experiences of each generation, and taught by churches and governments system?Is there any real explanation other than the hallucinations shared by all, based on widespread knowledge and the complex and mysterious processes of change that result from it? In Genesis we read of angels having sexual intercourse with "man's daughters."Ancient Greek and Roman legends tell of gods appearing to women in the form of bulls, swans, or piles of gold and impregnating them.In early Christian teaching, philosophy arose not from the human mind, but from the pillow whispers of demons—ambassadors who descended from heaven to smuggle God’s secrets to their human mates.Legends with the same content are also widely circulated in the cultures of countries all over the world.Similar demons to the incubus include Arabian gods, Greek satyrs, Hindu demons, Samoan sex ghosts, Celtic ghosts, and many others.In an age when demons are rampant, it is easy for people to describe someone they fear or hate as a devil.Legend has it that Mo Lin and the female incubus gave birth to offspring.Plato, Alexander the Great, Augusta, and Martin Luther all said the same thing.Sometimes entire peoples—such as the Huns and Cypriots—were cursed by their enemies as offspring bred by the devil. In the Biography of the Jewish Holy Law, the prototype of the harlot is the night demon, and God created her and Adam with clay.Because she disobeyed God's will, she was expelled from the Garden of Eden, but instead of returning to God, she went to Adam.Since then, she has seduced Adam's offspring every night.In ancient Iranian culture and many other cultures, nocturnal emission in men was believed to be the result of seduction by nymphs.St. Teresa of Ávila vividly described intercourse with an angel—an ambassador of light, not an angel of darkness, she firmly believed—as did other women later sanctified by Catholics same thing. The 18th-century magician and charlatan Cagliostro openly convinced people that, like Jesus in Nazareth, he was the product of a union between "a child of heaven and earth." In 1645, Anne Geoffrey, a young girl from Cornwall, England, was found sleeping on the floor from exhaustion.Much later, she recalled being attacked by half a dozen small men, then paralyzed, taken to a castle in the sky, where she was sexually seduced by them and sent home.She called those little men elves (to many devout Christians, as to the Inquisitors who tried Joan of Arc, it was just a different name, but the essence was the same. An elf is a devil, which is both clear and simple questions).It came back from the sky to terrorize and torture her.The following year, the woman was arrested on charges of witchcraft.Traditionally, pixies have magical powers that can paralyze a person with the simplest touch.In Immortal World, the general passage of time is very slow.Their fertility is compromised, so they have sex with humans and take their offspring—sometimes leaving behind an elf substitute, called a "swap child."From now on, it seems like an easy question: What if Anne Jeffrey grew up in a culture where aliens were talked about and elves were talked about; UFOs were talked about, but not castles in the sky? Girl, so is there any major difference between the story she told and the story told by the "kidnapped"? David Herford, in his 1982 book Terror from the Night: A Study of Historical Experiences of Paranormal Assaults, describes a college-educated, entrepreneurial young man in his 30s memories.He said that when he was a teenager, he lived with his aunt one summer.One night, he saw mysterious lights moving in the room.Later, he fell asleep.From the bed, he saw a white glowing object climbing up the stairs.It went into his room, paused for a moment, and said—disappointingly, it seemed to me to say—"This is a linoleum." Some nights, the object was a Old woman, some nights, it's an elephant.Sometimes the young man believed the whole thing was a dream, and sometimes he was sure he was awake.He was pinned down on the bed, limp and unable to move or cry out.His heart rate increased and his breathing was difficult.The same thing happened many nights in a row.what's going on?This kind of thing was widely circulated before the occurrence of alien abduction.If the young man knew there was an alien abduction, shouldn't the old woman he was talking about have a bigger head and bigger eyes? In some famous passages in his book The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon describes the changing forces between credulity and skepticism in late antiquity: Credulity acts on the rites of faith; fanaticism may masquerade as an expression of inspiration, accident or mechanical device whose effects are due to supernatural causes...   In modern times (Gibbon wrote in the mid-eighteenth century), latent, even unconscious, skeptical spirits act in accordance with the most pious intentions.Their acknowledgment of supernatural facts is apathetic and passive acquiescence rather than active assent.For a long time, people have observed and respected the unchanging natural order.Our reason, or at least our imagination, is not adequately prepared for the visible acts of divinity.But in the early days of Christianity the human condition was quite different.The most curious or most credulous among the Pagans were often persuaded to join a society that firmly believed in the existence of magical powers.The earliest Christians were always close to mystical views.Their minds are molded by the habit of believing in the strangest events.They feel, they fantasize that they are constantly being attacked by demons from all sides.They are comforted by hallucinations, they are taught by prophecies, they pray through churches for miraculous deliverance from danger, disease and death...   They are steadfast in persuading people that the air they breathe is filled with unseen enemies and countless demons who watch every opportunity, assume every form, intimidate, and above all lure people of their undefended virtues .People's imaginations, even their senses, are tricked by fanaticism disguised as something.Those hermits who pray at midnight, troubled by unintentional sleep, are easily deluded by hallucinations of fear or pleasure that occupy their sleep and daydreams... The practice of superstition applies to the masses.If they are forced to sleep, they will regret the loss of pleasurable hallucinations.Their fondness for the strange and supernatural, their curiosity about future events, and their strong penchant for extending their hopes and fears beyond the confines of the visible world to infinity are prime reasons for the establishment of polytheistic cults.It is most urgent to warn the public that they should believe that the decline of any system of mysticism is the result of the introduction of other forms of superstition...   In addition to the influence of superstition on the general public as discussed by Gibbon.The devil did not spare the upper classes either.Even a king of England—James I, the first Stuart monarch—had written a book full of credulous and superstitious views on the devil (The Magic of the Gods, 1597).He was also the patron of the translation of the Bible into English, which bears his name.Tobacco is "the devil's weed" is King James's view, according to which witches were found according to the degree of addiction.But by 1628, King James had turned out to be a complete skeptic—mostly because it was discovered that teenagers had some fake diabolical items, and innocent people were accused of witchcraft for it.If we think that the skepticism that Gibbon said was characteristic of his age is diminishing in ours, and if even a little of the irrepressible credulity which he thinks characterizes the postclassical age has survived to ours, then Why shouldn't we expect something like the devil to find a place in the popular culture of modern civilization? And of course, as I am eagerly reminded by the extraterrestrial visitation event, it has been shown that there is still an equally historic event, and that is extraterrestrials.Aliens, they say, are constantly visiting us, teasing us, stealing our sperm and eggs to inseminate us.Before, we thought they were gods, devils, spirits or demons, but now we understand that they are aliens who have deceived us for thousands of years.Jacques Valli has expressed this point of view.But why were there no actual reports of flying saucers before 1947?Why doesn't one of the world's major religions use flying saucers as icons of God?Why didn't aliens warn us of the dangers posed by high technology at that time?Why isn't this a currently completed genetic experiment (whatever its subjects)?And why can't this experiment be completed by some kind of biological application of very advanced technical attainments after thousands of years or more?If the purpose of this family planning is to change our destiny, why should we bother so much? Along the lines of this point of view, we can expect people who adhere to the old beliefs to understand "alien" as fairies, gods and demons.In fact, there are now several sects - such as "Raelians" - who believe that gods or gods come to earth in UFOs.Some alien abductees refer to these aliens as "angels" or "messengers of God" (although these terms are offensive).There are also some who still think they are devils. In Whitley Strieber's book The Church, which records first-hand accounts of "alien abductions," the author describes: Whatever they were, they looked hideous and hideous, obscene, malevolent, like monsters.Of course they are devils.They must...I also remember the thing being there huddled up, startlingly ugly, its arms and legs like the limbs of a large insect, its eyes staring straight at me. Strieber is said to have now publicly stated that the horrors of the night may have been dreams and hallucinations. An Encyclopedia of Christian News, compiled by fundamentalists, included articles on UFOs, including "The Obsession of Non-Catholics" and "Scientists Think UFOs Are Creations of the Devil."People from the Religious Forgery Research Group at the University of California, Berkeley say that UFOs are created by the devil.The Zodiac Church in McMinnville, Oregon, believes that all aliens are hostile to Earthlings. A 1993 dispatch from the Cognitive Cosmic Liaison Committee informs us that the UFOs treat humans as experimental animals and expect us to worship them, but preferably with the Lord's Prayer.一些被绑架者已经被从福音派教堂中驱逐出去。这些事情听起来很像撒旦崇拜。由戴夫·亨特于1980年写的原教旨主义小册子《崇拜狂热》认为： 很清楚，UFO不是物理的，它们似乎是来自另一维的鬼魂的显灵，它们企图改变人类的思维方式。……我们可以推测，人们所说的UFO实体是用心灵感应方式与人类联系的，它们总是宣讲同样的蛇是被引见给夏娃的四个谎言……。这些生物都是魔鬼，它们的目的就是反对基督教。 许多教派认为UFO和外星人绑架案使人们预感到“时代的终结”。 如果UFO来自另一个行星或另一维，那么它们是在主要宗教中对我们进行谆谆教诲的同一个上帝派来的吗？原教旨主义抱怨说，UFO的各种现象从没有提出过对一个真实的上帝的信仰的要求，然而，UFO活动所透露出的主要思想和做法却是与《圣经》和天主教教义相悖。 拉尔夫·拉特在他的《新时代：基督教批判》(1990)中探讨了UFO的问题，他的文章是典型的文学式的描述，是一种彻头彻尾的轻信的产物。这种作品是为了达到让人们接受UFO是真实存在的观点，同时痛斥UFO是撒旦的工具，是反基督教的，而不是将科学的怀疑精神作为研究UFO的有力武器。经过磨破的武器所能达到的目标远远超过反异教主义者的狭隘目的。 基督教原教旨主义作家哈尔·林德赛在他于1994年写成的宗教畅销书《地球——公元2000年》中写道： 我已经完全相信UFO是确实存在的……。它们是由具有高智能和巨大能力的外星人所操纵的……。我认为，这些生物不仅来自外星球，而且本质上是超自然的。坦率地说，我认为它们是魔鬼……是撒旦阴谋的组成部分。 这个结论的证据是什么？在圣路加的著作第21章第11节和第12节中，谈到耶稣说的“来自上帝的伟大信号”绝没有提到UFO这样的东西。林德赛特别忽视了第32节，在这一节中，作者谈到，耶稣已经清楚无误地告诉我们的是发生在1世纪，而不是20世纪的事情。 还有一条基督教教义表明外星生命不可能存在。例如，在1994年5月23日的《基督教新闻》中，神学博士W·加里·克拉普顿讲述谈论了他的根据： 《圣经》无论是以清晰明了的还是晦涩隐晦的方式，谈论了生命的各种形式，它没有告诉我们明确的答案。在《圣经》的所有内容中都没有明确地肯定或否定智能外星生命的存在。但是，《圣经》隐晦地否认了这种生物的存在，因此也就否认了飞碟的可能性。……《圣经》认为地球是宇宙的中心……。圣彼得说，'行星所盼望的'救世主是不值得讨论的问题。这就是对其它行星上有没有智能生命的回答。如果确实如此，那么谁来拯救它们？当然不会是基督……。与《圣经》的教导不一致的经验必须被当做谬误而掘弃。《圣经》所说的一切都是真理。 但是许多其他基督教教派——比如罗马天主教——思想是完全开放的。它并没有先天(apriori)反对或否认外星人或UFO的存在的理由。 60年代早期，我认为，UFO的传说主要是为满足宗教的需要而人为编造的。当科学以非常复杂的看法不加批判地坚持古老的宗教的时候，科学用另一种方式提出上帝的假说。这种方式就是使用科学术语，使用肤浅的科学词汇“说明”上帝的巨大力量。它解释说，古时的众神和魔鬼从天堂降临至地球，它们不断地纠缠我们，告诉我们未来的前景，用一个更充满希望的未来来戏弄我们，到那时，太空时代的神秘宗教即将形成。 民俗学研究者托马斯·E·布拉德在1989年写道： 绑架报道听起来像是一个古老的与那些替神执法的外星人相遇的传说的翻版。 他下结论说： 科学也许已经从我们的信仰中赶走了魔鬼与女巫，但是这个空白又很快被具有同样魔力的外星人所填补。只是这些外星生物的外部标志是新的而已。外星人所带来的所有的恐惧和心理激情似乎都可简单地追溯到早时的传说，所有的传说与旧时的演义无甚差别，那些东西仍在夜间发出奇怪和可怕的声音。 所有的时代、所有地方的人都会有时体验如同真实一般生动的幻觉。在这些幻觉中经常有性的内容，感觉到被陌生的、全心灵感应的、在天空中飞行并能穿墙而过的生物所绑架(用流行的文化俚语，用我们时代的精华语言来描述细节)，这一切都是可能的吗？其他那些没有这样的亲身经历的人感到这种事情很刺激，在某些地方也很熟悉。他们便相信这些传说。很快他们就将这些传说说成是自己的亲身经历，并启发其他人体会自己所遇到的情景和幻觉，让他们也加入到这些民间传说、神话和传奇故事的传播队伍中来。这些自发产生的世俗的幻觉和外星人绑架的范例之间的联系与这些假说是一致的。 事情可能就是这样产生的：当所有的人都认为神是从天上降临地球的时候，我们就会产生神的幻觉；当我们对魔鬼很熟悉的时候，就产生了梦淫妖；当精灵被大家所接受，我们就看见了精灵；在神灵主义泛滥的时代，我们就遇到神灵；当古老的神话对人们失去了吸引力，我们就开始认为外星生物是有道理的，然后靠催眠术产生幻想的趋势就出现了。 歌曲或外国话中的只言片语、我们看到的形象和事件、我们儿时听到的故事，当几十年以后我们就会准确地回想起来，而这种回忆并不是我们有意识的记忆的结果。赫尔曼·梅尔维尔在其一书中说：“当人处于强烈的激情中时，会满口古旧的语言而毫无察觉，当我们研究为什么会出现这样的现象时，结果发现，这些是当他们还是孩子的时候就经常听到的古老的语言。”在我们的日常生活中，我们会在无意中毫不费力地将文化中通行的东西吸收到我们自己的语言中来并使其变成我们自己的东西。 同样的接受别人传输的动机主要体现在精神分裂症的“指令幻觉”中。人们接受别人传输给他们的神秘的信号，根据指令他们去做事情。他们接受命令去暗杀政治领导人、民族英雄、击退英国侵略者或者伤害他们自己，因为这是上帝的、耶稣的、魔鬼的、妖魔的或天使的意志，也可能是其他人听不到的声音传达给他的强硬的命令。这些命令或指令无论如何都必须完成。谁发出的这些命令呢？谁在我们的头脑中说话？养育我们的文化为我们提供了答案。 想象一下广告中不断重复出现的形象所产生的巨大作用，特别是对那些易受影响的听众和读者所起的作用吧。它可以使我们相信几乎所有的事情，甚至吸烟是有益的。在我们这个时代，人们普遍认同的外星人来自数不清的科幻故事、小说、电视故事片和电影中的主要内容。UFO成了周末小报将其虚假化和神秘化的主要内容。任何时代最赚钱的影片就是以外星人为主要内容的影片，就像被外星人绑架过的人所传说的事件一样令人感兴趣。在1975电视台将黑尔事件拍成以没有任何证据为基础的电视片之前，关于绑架事件的传说是很少的。1987年，当斯特里伯声称的亲身经历的事件被编写成配有引人注目的画有大眼睛的“外星人”的封皮的书成为畅销书以后，外星人突然成为大众最热门的话题。与这个话题相比，我们以后基本上再也没有听说那些梦淫妖、小精灵和小仙子们了。它们都到什么地方去了？ 这种外星人绑架的传说远不是全球性的，而仅仅是令人失望地局限于某些国家和地区。大部分传说都产自北美国家。这些传说很难超越美国的文化范围。在其他国家，也有一些外星人的报道，这些国家的外星人都是些长着鸟头、昆虫头，有的是爬行类动物，有的是机器人，也有的金发碧眼(后一种估计出自北欧国家)。每一种外星人的行为都有所不同。很显然，文化的因素起着重要的作用。 在“飞碟”或“UFO”这样的词汇出现的很久以前，科幻故事中充满了这些“小绿人”和“长着昆虫眼的妖怪”。不知是什么原因，那种长着大脑袋(和大眼睛)的没有毛发的小东西在相当长的时间内一直是我们心目中标准的外星人。你们可以从20年代或30年代的科幻畅销杂志中(还有其他的刊物，比如，在1937年10月出版的刊物《短波和电视》中就有火星向地球发送无线电波的描写)经常看到它们的形象。这些形象可能在科幻先驱H·G·威尔斯所描述的遥远的后代的身上找到。威尔斯认为，人类就是从小脑袋，但是毛发浓密的原始人进化而来的。他们身体强健，远不像维多利亚时期的学术味十足的人。我们可以沿着这个趋势推算到遥远的未来。也就是说，到那个时候，我们的后代应该是基本无毛、大脑袋的人，他们几乎不能依靠自己的力量走路。其他世界的先进的生物可能也应该生来就与他们没有什么差别。 在美国80年代和90年代早期媒体报道的典型的现代外星生命是很小的，它们都长着不成比例的大脑袋和大眼睛，发育不良的面部特征，没有明显可见的眉毛和生殖器，皮肤呈灰色、光滑。它们像受孕仅20个星期的胚胎一样可怕，也像饥饿待毙的孩子。为什么我们这么多人对胚胎或营养不良的孩子如此着迷，还要想象它们向我们进攻和强行与我们发生性关系，这可真是个有趣的问题。 在近几年的美国，与那种矮小的灰色的形象不同的外星人形象正在兴起。萨克拉门托市的精神疗法医生理查德·博伊兰说：“你看到过3英寸半到4英寸的外星人；你看到过5到6英寸高的外星人；有人看到过7到8英寸高的外星人；另一个看到过3、4、5英寸不等高度的外星人。它们有的手指尖有肉趾或吸盘；有的人看到的有蹼或无蹼的手指；有的人看到的是有着大大的钻石形状的眼睛的外星人，它们的眼睛有的歪斜、有的外突，有的是平行的。在有些事件中，有人将它们形容成有大大的卵形的眼睛，而没有钻石般的倾斜角度。有人还说外星人是瘦弱的小学生的模样，而其他人又说它们与其他说法中的身体形状完全不同，即所谓的螳螂形状或蜥蜴形状……。我能够周期性地看到一个一个不同的外星人。我非常认真地注意那些很少出现的外国的和独特的外星人事件的报道，对于这些报道我还要进一步进行确认。” 尽管UFO绑架综合症描述的外星生命是这种模样，但是，我们认为，这仍然是一个乏味的世界。人们猜想的外星人的形状表现出人们想象的失败和人类深深的焦虑。在所有的传说中，描述的生物没有一个会使人感到你在没有见过鸟之前，看到一个风头鹦鹉那样惊奇。原生动物学、细菌学或真菌学教科书充满了令人惊奇的事物，它们远远超过专门描写外星人绑架的作家所描述的最吸引人的故事的有趣程度。坚信外星人的人将这些作家描述的故事中共同的部分当做真实性的特征，但是他们却对这些人利用共有的文化和生物学编造他们的故事的证据毫不理会。