In a previous post, I commented on the late ufologist and abductee Dr.Karla Turner, who based on her research, concluded that alien intelligences have been controlling and maniputaling us for years. One of the ways of alien manipulations is "appearing in such forms as Jesus, the Pope, certain celebrities, and even the dead spouses of the abductees."
According to Turner and other ufologists, the technology of these beings is impressive and some of them (the "bad" ones) use it in order to manipulate us in different ways.
One of these ways is manipulation through religion and spirituality. Understading the human needs for trascendence and ultimate meaning, supposedly they exploit such needs promoting the creation of cults and religions, contacting (through paranormal means) certain key people and giving them spiritual information, presenting it as coming directly from some respected or influential spiritual teacher of humankind (e.g Jesus) or even God himself.
A careful survey of the most important of these New-Age cults, religions or spiritualities reveal that there are important inconsistences among the respective teachings (e.g about reincarnation), but they tend to have one aspect in common: a revisionist reading of the historical Jesus and basic Christian teachings.
As consequence, traditional Christians are interested in confronting these New-Age movements and exposing (what they believe) are false teachings desgined to mislead the public.
My purpose here is not to settle the debate between Christians and their opponents, but to provide a brief summary of the debate and how aliens (if they exist and are as Turner suggests) can be exploiting such a situation.
The Christian attitude against New-Age revisionism about Jesus has a basis in the New Testament. There, Jesus is reported as having said "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits....' (Matthew 7:15-16) and also "Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand." (Matthew 24: 23-25)
The "sheep's clothing" mentioned there, obviously is not intented to be taken literally, but figuratively as a cover which is astutely designed to deceive and fool certain kinds of people. And one of the ways to deceive someone is to tell him what he/she want to hear.
We have to keep in mind that what people want to hear is person-relative and culture-relative. For example, a traditional Christian won't want to hear any anti-Christian spiritual teachings or doctrines, but people hostile to Christianity and sympathetic to spiritual matters will be eager to hear any teaching about the historical Jesus which doesn't fit with the traditional view of Jesus, specially if such teaching comes from a putative revealed or paranormal source. They will tend to give credibility to the latter over traditional teachings.
In summary, for biblical Christians, it is not only previsible or possible that certain spiritual or paranormal sources or people will claim to be transmitting revisionist teachings about Jesus, but that such a thing has to be fully expected if the New Testament teachings attributed to Jesus are true.
Regardless of the spiritual implications of this controversy, this dispute between traditional Christian and New Age revisionist views about Jesus has a clear cultural component, i.e. it has to do with the history, ideology and culture of Western societies.
As evidence for this, we can see that such revisionist groups have mainly originated and developed in the United States of America, a country in which a certain version of Biblical Christianity is dominating (specially a fundamentalistic, anti-intellectual, anti-scientific and obscurantist version of Christianity which is at variance with the rationalistic and philosophically sophisticated version of classical Christianity and current Christian scholarship).
Such obscurantist version of Christianity has produced a strong anti-Christian reaction, which is the breeding ground for the flourishing of alternatives spiritualities and religions (also of militant forms of atheism).
Just consider these hard facts:
1-Even though not a cult nor a religion, the so-called Jesus Seminar (a radical group of liberal scholars) was founded in United States. They're leading representatives of radical revisionistic scholarly views about the historical Jesus, views which are clearly and demostrably anti-Christian (but misleadingly some of his representatives present themselves as Christians).
2-Very influential and putative paranormal or spiritual sources of revisionist information about the historical Jesus like the Urantia Book, A Course in Miracles, Conversations with God (by Neale Donald Walsh), Mormonism, etc. comes from the United States. (I call these sources "paranormal", because the information that they supposedly received came through paranormal means like automatic writing, an "inner voice" heard by the chosen person, putative extraterrestial contact, telepathy, "visions", paranormal dreams, etc.)
It is a coincidence that all or most of these movements come from USA? I don't think so.
These facts are telling, they tell us a lot if interpreted in the context mentioned above about the ideological dominance of a certain version of biblical Christianity in USA and the anti-Christian reaction which it has caused there.
These facts are telling, they tell us a lot if interpreted in the context mentioned above about the ideological dominance of a certain version of biblical Christianity in USA and the anti-Christian reaction which it has caused there.
Just for the record: I'm extremely skeptical of the claims of all of these sources (specially of the Jesus Seminar) and of the claim that the groups mentioned in point 2 has an actual paranormal or spiritual origin. I consider all of them to be fundamentally unreliable, misleading and unscholarly sources of information about the historical Jesus.
But for the argument's sake, let's take their word for granted and assume an actual paranormal origin of these sources.
But for the argument's sake, let's take their word for granted and assume an actual paranormal origin of these sources.
It is curious not only that these groups were born in the United States where the anti-Christian reaction is strong, but that their main teachings and doctrines are revisionisms of traditional Christianity and tells exactly what the anti-Christian movement wants to hear, producing a new, wholly palatable to contemporary post-Christian (or anti-Christian) ears, version of the historical Jesus. Since what people want to hear is culture-relative, the ideal choosing for positing new (revisionist) information about Jesus is precisely a culture (like the American culture) in which an anti-Christian reaction already exists and is strong and therefore revisionistic theories will tend to be accepted sympathetically or at least with less rigurous critical filters.
The dream of putative manipulative aliens (and other spiritual entities with bad intentions) have come true!
The dream of putative manipulative aliens (and other spiritual entities with bad intentions) have come true!
If Turner is right, and aliens are interested in manipulating us, among other methods, through a bunch of new religious doctrines conflicting with the mainstream Christian view, then it seems to be likely that they use the following strategies:
1-Contact people who are part of the anti-Christian reaction, i.e. people hostile or unsympathetic to Christianity, because these are the ones who will tend to believe the new information that the aliens will provide. (Not surprinsingly, if you study the biography of the founders of these groups, many of them have been previously hostile to Christianity, some of them being even atheists. They are exactly the kind of people who will be biased in favour of any anti-Christian teaching transmitted paranormally by the putative authoritative source about the real Jesus).
2-Focus in teaching what people WANT to hear, i.e. what is emotionally satisfying and ideologically palatable. Anti-Christians want to hear that the distintive aspects of Christinaity are false or wrong. Therefore, the revisionist information has to:
-Deny or cast doubt on or reinterpret the idea that Jesus perceived himself (or was) the only son of God. In a spiritually pluralistic society, an overwhelming majority of people (even some Christians) will be sympathetic to this pluralistic concept. If you check carefully the information of these new spiritualities, you will see in most of them that a consistent feature consists precisely in putting down the exclusivistic view of Jesus, and the portraying of him as a spiritual teacher among many other, perhaps with a higher spiritual level in relation with us, but not with an exclusive spiritual status above any other teacher.
-Deny or cast doubt or reinterpret key biblical concepts like "sin", "forgiveness", or "salvation". The reinterpretation in question is, of course, the one palatable for the anti-Christian audience. The concepts will be reinterpreted in the light of our contemporary culture, spiritual prejudices and sensibilities and wishful thinking instead of the actual historical context in which such words were uttered (e.g. the monotheistic Judaism of the first century).
3-Exploit the negative emotions and feelings typically connected with Christianity.
As an outsider (i.e. as a person who wasn't born nor educated in USA nor indoctrinated in monotheistic religions), I've observed carefully that in my anti-Christian friends and non-friends, they have an emotional discomfort with Christianity. When you asked them, they relate negative emotions and feelings of guilt, fear of punishment (by God), resentment and other negative emotions connected with their experiences in a Christian familiy and churches.
According to my observation, most of them are ignorant of the best literature of Christian theology and philosophy, and they're only familiar with the vulgar, obscurantist version of Christianity which is common in USA. As consequence, their understanding of key Christian doctrines (and philosophical debate about them in the literature) is totally abscent or extremely superficial.
By in any case, their main criticisms and objections seem to be connected with emotional factors, not with rational ones. It is not lack of historical evidence for Christianity that they complain to, but the negative feelings connected with key Christian concepts like "sin", "hell" and so forth. This observation seems to be confirmed by the fact that they new New Age spirituality that they have adopted is lacking of good scientific or scholarly evidence in its favour, but even so they accept it because it makes them feel good. In other words, it is not a matter of evidence but of feelings (otherwise, it becomes inexplicable that they accept as most reliable a source of information of the 20th century about Jesus, than the early, 1st century documents, witnesses and written sources about Jesus which support the traditional view about him).
By in any case, their main criticisms and objections seem to be connected with emotional factors, not with rational ones. It is not lack of historical evidence for Christianity that they complain to, but the negative feelings connected with key Christian concepts like "sin", "hell" and so forth. This observation seems to be confirmed by the fact that they new New Age spirituality that they have adopted is lacking of good scientific or scholarly evidence in its favour, but even so they accept it because it makes them feel good. In other words, it is not a matter of evidence but of feelings (otherwise, it becomes inexplicable that they accept as most reliable a source of information of the 20th century about Jesus, than the early, 1st century documents, witnesses and written sources about Jesus which support the traditional view about him).
This lack of proper technical information about the religion which they happend to reject, strong wishful thinking plus the negative emotions connected with these doctrines provides the perfect breeding ground for spiritualities which promote positive feelings and emotions, even if they lack of any serious and objective evidence in its favour.
If aliens are manipulating us, it is key in their strategy to use these negative emotions to create, with a "reverse effect", a strong predisposition in favour of any new teaching about Jesus which promotes positive emotions.
This would explain their stressing in reinterpretation or denial of key concepts like "sin", "hell", "atonement" or "salvation", which typically are the ones connected with negative emotions and feelings of anti-Christians.
At least this is what I've carefully observed and I have to admit that I haven't found exceptions in the people whom I've known. Perhaps they exist, however.
In this post, I've taken for granted (for the argument's sake) that alien exists and Turner is right about them. I've suggested that the alien hypothesis explains well the revisionistic views of Jesus of paranormal origin (paranormal dreams, automatic writing, etc.), not because these revisionistic views be false, but because they are strategically useful to the alien manipulations.
If the traditional view of Jesus is true or false, or whether the revisionistic view is true or false, is something that I haven't evaluated in this post (even though my current reading of the historical evidence of Jesus' teachings doesn't support these revisionistic views, which are far beyond and even run in many cases contrary to what the evidence points out.).
My purpose has been to suggest a possible connection between alien manipulation and new sources of information about Jesus in a social and cultural context apt to such religious manipulation.
It is up to you to evaluate these sources and connections and draw your own conclusions.
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