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Hello all and welcome back to another of our demonology series. This time Demonology 204. And today we're going to be talking about some of the theological discomfort that can come around the idea of ghosts and spirits of the dead. Especially if you are talking with people that walk the more evangelical path, then you'll often hear them condemning just the very idea of ghosts, and they'll claim that everything is a demon, no matter what it happens to be. And we wanted to shed some light on that today. And joined by joined with me this evening.
I have my good friends Chris and Dean from The Wandering Road again. And we're gonna have some fun. How are you guys doing tonight? We ain't joint releasing yet. I'm keeping this from myself.
I'm kidding. I'm good. Y'all remember my last episode where Dean we talked about how I was in pain because of my foot? Well, I'm in a boot for the next three fucking weeks. So that's how I'm feeling. I'm on steroids and painkillers and for the next three weeks, and I absolutely hate it. So how are you doing, buddy?
Different uh different uh issues but similar. It is freaking rainy here again in supposedly beautiful Hawaii. Um, but yeah, it's just like it's just been another hell of a week so far, and the week is only what like barely halfway over. Hanging in there.
Cool. So I would have y'all I wanted to start us off by asking, have y'all encountered individuals who have had a hard pass on believing that anything that goes bump in the night can doesn't exist or can only be a demon? Yep, yeah, absolutely.
And my favorite is uh when I hung around, like I had some close friends in the ultra-religious Christian crowd, and anytime we talked about aliens or something like that, just bringing up a conversation, a lot of people would inevitably pivot to there's no aliens, those are demons that are trying to trick us into thinking that there's something, there's some other intelligent force out in the universe or beings or whatever. And uh that's kind of like I had never heard that before, but that that's my little tidbit about uh experience with stuff like that.
Yeah, I've definitely had that encounter I that I could count. Talking with people that I know, you know, people in school, people, you know, in college and everything. Thinking that anything, there there's no such thing as ghosts, that you know, there's no such thing as spirits. If there is some sort of noise at night, something goes bump in the night, it's automatically demonic. So I've encountered quite a few people like that. And I always wonder why that would be a problem. From a theological perspective, they talk about like ghosts in the Bible, don't they?
Like uh they do, but I think a lot of it, at least from what I can tell, so I've done an entire episode about necromancy in the Jewish faith. And there's a lot there, more than you would think about. And there's a lot that goes that surrounds, you know, unclean spirits, various kinds of spirits, even various kinds of angels. And at the end of the day, it doesn't I I think that A, people think that, oh, if I pick up the Bible, I'm automatically going to understand everything about it. And B, there's a lot of misrepresentation within particular passages that people will go to.
It and third, a lot of the I'm not trying to pick on Protestantism in particular here. So forgive me, I grew up Protestant, but there's a lot of miseducation or just lack of education amongst preachers of certain denominations, and they can easily spread a ton of misinformation all the way across the board. So I don't know which one of those is more likely to be the culprit, but it's more than likely a mixture of all three.
So in your episode, not to rehash it for your listeners or anything, but can you talk a little bit about your uh conclusions or things you talked about to drive the conversation?
Yeah, absolutely. Um, so you know, first ancient Judaism, uh, and I've repeated this many a time, it was not divorced from its surroundings. And all you have to do is just look to Babylon for the idea that ghosts are thoroughly believed in. In fact, there were a class of like demons that could either be just true outright nasty things or protector demons, but what like the primary cause of most ill luck or medical issues were spirits.
And if you ever get the chance to pick up and read Irving Finkel's book, uh, The First Ghost Stories, it is amazing because there are just so many different passages about taking care of your ancestors with water libations and food offerings. And if you don't, you can, you know, especially for your family line, you can be essentially cursed, and you can run across other ghosts which have not been taken care of or have been forgotten, and you know, they can inflict ill harm upon you. So such a major portion of another religion is absolutely going to affect ancient Judaism, and it did.
And you find tons of different references when it comes to um the idea of magic and spirits, but ghosts were very much a thing for ancient Judaism, and that has been preserved going forward.
So going off of that, talking about uh let's keep it in antiquity, right? So by the way, your eyes are like red again. I don't know what the hell that is. He's got the demon eyes. He got the demon eyes. But keeping sticking with antiquity, like Greco-Roman traditions, they had spirits, Romans, their traditions, they had spirits, they had like offerings and stuff like that. So one thing that comes to mind, and it could probably I might be just making this connection myself, but it's probably not related.
The reason I think some Christian denominations try to reject the category or the idea of spirits or ghosts in general is to try to break away from any of those beliefs from antiquity that still stick around because every culture has some sort of ghost story, has some sort of vengeful spirit, have some sort of spirit in general, whether it be, you know, your loved one coming back to see you or something of that sort. So that's the one thing that comes to mind, and that's something I've always, you know, struggled with, struggled understanding why some people take that stance.
And the most immediate thing I could think of is out of fear, because people automatically hate things they don't understand or some things that they can't explain. So that immediately comes to mind. And on the flip side, you know, it's this is a demonology series, right? You have some denominations that don't think demons exist.
So I mean, you can you can find references to that everywhere, or you'll find even within the Catholic faith, there's a lot of priests who will give mouth to the demonic, but then they secretly don't believe in anything related to that. I think the movie Nefarious kind of highlights some of those current beliefs.
Yeah, no, it's a really good movie.
Going off of that, except for the fact that I didn't even realize this until I went on a Halloween episode with two guys who used to run a podcast, and it was a yearly thing. I told them about the movie, they went and watched it, and they were pissed because they're like, I can't believe you tricked me into watching a movie with Glenn Beck in it. And I went, I went, and sure enough, that final interviewer is Glenn Beck. And I apologize. I'm like, I didn't friggin' know that was Glenn Beck. I don't support or anything that man has ever said or done.
I forgot he existed, to be honest with you.
That's probably the best thing you can do. So I will say this there are some negations in the Hebrew Bible, like for example, it it negates them in the fact that it says that they don't come back from Sheol, which makes sense. If something has gone to its permanent resting place, and you have to remember within ancient Judaism, Sheol wasn't like hell, it was just uh a place underground in which people existed. It was neither good nor was it bad. It you just kind of were there. It was like Hades, basically. Yeah, kind of.
You know, there are prohibitions against messing with spirits, statements saying that people who do so are unclean, and that God is against those types of practices. But if there were no ghosts, why would you create laws to prohibit interacting with them? That takes a little bit more intuitive brain cells than you know a lot of fanatics will ever put into the into the situation, but there you go.
No, you bring up a good point. Why would you make a rule set and make something taboo if there wasn't some truth to it?
Even the dictionary of deities and demons in the Hebrew Bible, which is an amazing book, it says like for such laws we may safely infer that cults of the dead existed and flourished in ancient Palestine to the extent that they were considered a threat to what eventually emerged as normative.
So what was the what was the name of the underworld again that you said shoal? Sheol. Yeah, I I had heard about that realm before. I just don't think I ever heard the actual name. I think what interests me the most about this conversation so far is like I'm thinking about you were talking about leaving offerings and putting yourself in danger in ancient Judaism of um attracting like negative energy or even like curses to your family, if you didn't do those practices. Then I think about like other cultures in history and that still go on to this day.
Like you know, just as an example, I know it's uh across a lot of different cultures in East Asia, but specifically like say Vietnam or China, you put the shrine up after a loved one passes away and you leave offerings like actually my wife's family still does that to this day for for some of the elders who had passed away within the last 10 years. And so they'll put stuff like fruit or beverages or something in front of the shrine and and light incense and whatnot. And but it's interesting how different cultures have a different perspective on that.
I know I know in Eastern culture that if there was there is a belief or there was a belief at one point strongly similar to ancient Judaism, where if you didn't do that, then you were uh attracting negativity to your family. I don't know if it was more so attracting the danger of being attached to something or cursed, but it was more so like for the loved one on the other side. But that always fascinated me the idea, like going back to the whole Jol thing where there's it's not really like hell, it's just an underworld, it's just a place to your soul occupies.
And I think some cultures, correct me if I'm wrong, believe it's like permanent. Like it's like they used to believe that it was just that's just where you go forever. Um, and it's not good or bad. It's kind of like uh de facto purgatory sort of thing, which I think is almost just as scary as like something uh similar or something else.
Sw switching back to the the ghost side um or this the spirit side negatively attaching to your family or cursing your family, it kind of seems like if you compare it to a modern day Christian religion where people just don't do that anymore for the most part, and they don't believe that if you don't like people will still go to the grave of the loved one and leave flowers or something, but there's no real perpetuation of this idea that if you don't do that, you were screwing your family over or screwing over the loved ones that are on the other side.
And so it almost it almost seems to me like it's if it does if that sort of thing does happen in a cultural religion, it's kind of like a topa thing. Like you're it seems like you're kind of creating the avenue for something like that to happen if you believe in it. And so that goes back to the whole broader concept of like believing in ghosts versus not believing in them. And if you believe in them, are you more likely to experience supernatural stuff?
It almost seems it almost seems like whatever other side the other side picks or chooses, because sometimes there are stories you people like don't believe in that sort of thing, and they have these weird, crazy, paranormal experiences that are unexplainable. And then people who b some people who believe in ghosts to the end of the earth want to see a ghost, they go out chasing them or whatever, and then they just don't experience anything at all.
And it's just like it just ties back into this whole confusion about what the nature of reality is, why do some things happen to certain people who believe certain things or otherwise? And uh yeah, I just had to put that that I that's what's running through my head with this conversation so far.
Yeah, and actually that's why I like the movie We Go On so much. Have either of you seen it? I have not, no. What's it what's the general synopsis? Yeah, so it is a guy, the the main character, he is afraid of everything from riding in cars to buses to decay to mold, essentially anything that could lead or reminds him of death, he's petrified of. And so he he he poses this question to his mom. He's like, I can either spend the next decade in therapy, which might treat some of the symptoms, or I can pay someone fifty thousand dollars if they prove to me that the afterlife exists.
And so he takes out the you know, a huge full-page ad in the in the LA Times, and he starts going through all of the correspondences, and essentially he finds three, and each one of them is vary in their approaches. It's really interesting. But there's one that talks about you know how people have filters and you know they they uh they grow out of them as they get older. Others will yeah, it it it just goes on and on and on.
But it yeah, it's a fantastic treatment of the of the by the way, JJ, did your did your uh friendly household ghost just move your camera? I thought for a second that it was um I have the obspot and apparently I did a hand signal which signaled it to track me. I thought that's what it was until I saw you reach up and like readjust your camera, and I'm like, oh okay, shit.
No, it has AI tracking, but it really sucks though. It's a great camera besides that. But nice AI.
That's another thing to talk about. That's another thing to unpack too. Like if we ever reach, like I don't want to derail the conversation, but just I'll just bring it up real quick. But if we ever reach a point of GDI or like whatever, whatever it is where like AI becomes officially sentient if it hasn't already. Um, but it's like what's gonna be the argument for like the soul and you know, the uh it's just gonna be oh my god, there's gonna be like just a whole other branch of theology and crap when that stuff hits the fancy.
Summon ghosts and lock them in your machine. Yeah. I watched it.
Frank Voto actually tried to start that conversation back in the 90s with a really horrible book that talked about you know like the you know, the human brain can carry this many petabytes and operates at this speed. If computers reach that level, then they'll gain self-awareness. It was all fucking bullshit. Just absolute bullshit.
I I'm sure you'll find this bullshit too, but I just came across a really interesting theory about how um there's some kind of new argument of evidence, and I haven't looked into it, so I don't know what the evidence is, but apparently there's new evidence to suggest that the way our brains function in terms of tapping into um like the subatomic quantum level, and it it's the theory is that we don't our consciousness doesn't have experiences in the three-dimensional world from the brain itself.
It literally taps into a pre-existing infinite stream of possibilities and pulls in and interprets its reality based off of like moment to moment. And so I don't even understand. Honestly, that probably confuses the crap out of a lot of people what I just said, and it tell me it's it confuses me too.
Like I don't even know what that means yet, but I just saw it's an interesting the the it's a theory, well, it it's a hypothesis, and the idea is that neurons as they're in as they are interconnecting and exchanging information, they're doing it through a quantum tunnel that they call microtubules, and so your thoughts are actually happening in a quantum state, and the idea is that consciousness can only be present or is present now because of the brain's interactivity with the quantum state. It I mean, it's a fascinating idea how they're ever proved that God only knows.
I mean, real quick, that like I've been thinking a lot about say OCD, and uh I always wondered like like the OCD factor, people get this and it's in and uh before I go off the rails, like I'll say that it ties back into what we're talking about because the whole idea that somehow humans can manifest an outcome on the spiritual side of reality by doing some act, for instance, like we said, leaving out tithes or offerings or something to this to the other the other side, the loved ones on the other side.
But it's like this crazy idea that somehow humans can pick up on that and they they believe or they sense deep down that some kind of action in this world can affect something else in the on the Other side or at the quantum level. And that reminds me of like someone who has say has OCD, where they get this sense that something bad's going to happen or something is going to play out a certain way. And this is just a subset of OCD, but like, you know, some ritualistic behavior to make something not happen.
But that's not something that people asked for to have as as a uh an ailment or something inside of them. And it's almost like kind of a subconscious meter that some people like it could be picking up. I don't know.
Like, I'm not saying that OCD does anything, like to the degree that some might someone might believe in terms of um uh doing a ritualistic behavior, but it it kind of reminds me of what other religions have picked up on, like trying to do something behavioral and consistent that has an effect on the other side, and tying that back into like, well, do we manifest the outcomes in this reality, like attaching a ghost ghost or a curse to us for not doing something, like not leaving an offering? Um, it's just so so weird to me. It's such a weird reality.
I had something and like was just that came to mind while you guys were talking. And I I just keep coming back to the concept of ghosts and spirits and the denial of them. And JJ, I'll throw this question at you. So what if ghosts or spirits exist? Like, why would that be such a deal breaker for some people, in your opinion? I I just can't wrap my head around it. Dean, I'm totally tracking with you with the whole OCD stuff and people that can get a feeling that something's gonna go wrong with their gut feeling and all that other stuff. Is that another form of tapping into the other side?
Quite possibly. Just when you deal with that gut instinct, you're you're kind of, I guess, disassociating from the physical and just focusing on the non-physical realm, if that makes sense, guys. Um, I don't know if totally going the wrong way with this.
But the uh Yeah, I know it's it's it's an interesting concept to think about because not only can we do that, you know, you get a bad feeling about something, it's like, okay, well, maybe I shouldn't go, then you don't go, and then you find out like a fire broke out or something, or there was a shooting or something like that, and then you get that sense, like your parents get that sense as well. Like my mom would tell me, like, hey, I don't think you should go to this place. And I'll like, and I'm like, why? I'm like, I just don't think you should go.
You don't go, and it turns out something bad happens, you know? So where does that fall into like the spectrum of I would guess, I would say like the spiritual plane. But JJ, the other thing that just keeps coming to mind is we talked about ancestor traditions, we talked about spirits, ghosts, we talked about briefly about necromancy in the Bible. I know why necromancy is frowned upon. I mean, that's kind of self-explanatory. But what I don't understand is why would a ghost or a spirit existing be so traumatizing to some people?
I mean, like if it doesn't affect you in any way, does it really matter? Or is there some sort of fear that because they do exist, if they do exist, it kind of shatters their belief structure, there they have the possibility.
I think you've hit it right on the head with that one. It complicates the idea that there is an afterlife that you go to when you die in this world. And as Paul said, there are those who are strong in faith and those who are weak in faith, those who have to have everything perfectly in line, and that's the only way in which they can perceive the world to be, or those who allow for more gray to come in, or everything's gray, and they can still cope. And I think that's the situation here. If it's not of God, it's of the devil.
That's the basic idea that you get within a lot of more evangelical faiths.
But isn't that kind of sorry to cut you off, but isn't that performative?
It absolutely is. I mean, you find this within, I mean, my God, the uh Church of Christ, it's if it's not of Jesus, it's of the devil. And that's become kind of their unofficial tagline for everything that they do, and that it's absolutely performative in nature. And I I think that if you if you have a legitimate reason for thinking that fine, I I can't change your mind, I'm not here to change your mind, but I would say that it limits your universe and your worldview so much that I think that you're missing out.
And I'll each even apply this and bring it on to the flip side of those who only believe in science and will sit there and point out a lot of the con there is a channel that I used to watch and on YouTube, and then they came out with an alternate channel that would do more deep dives. And the very first episodes they did were why ghosts do not exist. And it would just tout out the same old boring tropes that you would hear time and time again. That peripheral vision is, you know, you can see things weirdly in peripheral vision, or there can be vibrations which can give you a sense of doom.
All of those are correct, but they don't explain everything. And if you limit your worldview to only what you can see and touch, then I think you're missing out on a lot of other things. But that could be my own bias talking. I'm not saying that it's not.
So I got a great random question for you, JJ. If Chris, if you're um if you didn't have any follow-ups, um how how do ghosts fit into something uh or some religious belief that is so austere as something like Gnosticism? Because like Gnosticism has been popping up lately on my feeds because I've just been more curious about it. Um and the people who have um like are starting to to lean more into the idea of a really like kind of a darker reality of spirituality in in the in the context of humanity.
But what wouldn't what would a Gnostic uh Gnosticism or a Gnostic person say about what ghosts are or what demons are in the context of like showing up in humanity or presenting itself to people? That's a really good question.
And I don't really have I don't have an academic answer for that because I've I've kind of stayed away from Gnosticism.
Well, that's right. You were told to stay away from that, yeah.
Yeah rabbit hole. What I would imagine that they would say is that ghosts could be individuals who knew none of the rituals or magic words or practices that would get them into higher levels of heaven. That would be my first instinct, but I don't know if that's academically sound or not.
Man, you know what's creepy is I think we already talked about this. I don't know if it was like the last time we got together or two times before that, but I think you said something very similar um in a conversation about Gnosticism. And then I think we kind of like went on to the topic of um secret societies, and I'm not gonna say any specific society names, but the idea that there are ranks and levels and you have to do certain things a certain way and know that you know, probably know the incantations, etc. Yeah, yeah. See you know, tell us the secret. What's the secret, JJ?
Stop gatekeeping. That's only for me to know, right? But that's see that's what gets me about like why I'm gonna try not I'm gonna try so hard not to rant, but like it's being a human. It sucks being a human, it does because like and I just thought about this like less than 12 hours ago. It just crossed my mind. I'm like, well, you have all these, and I'm not uh just a precursor, I'm not shitting on any individual religion. I would, you know, I don't know anything. I take the suck Socratesian or the Socratic approach where I don't know anything at all.
But with that being said, I know a lot about generally cursory other religions and their religious texts and stuff, and it just it just blows my mind more and more every single day that people will not see the bigger picture in the fact that we get all these religious texts across different religions and all of them are ordained by some greater power or greater understanding, but that kind of leaves most of us in the dark. And then I start wondering like, well, how important are humans to the other side?
You know, like it, like I understand this idea that we're here to be some people think we're here to be tested and test our faith and test our reactions and stuff, but I feel like the unfair approach, that's an unfair approach because, and I'm not saying life should be fair, I'm just saying that's a factually unfair. But like if you were trying to raise a child, you're not gonna let your child keep touching the stove if it, you know, the child doesn't understand that it's gonna get burned every time.
And you can't just rely on one time of the child touching the stove to learn forever in every single case. So, like, like why wouldn't why would the approach for humans, if we're so beloved or coveted or protected, why would we be left in the dark with so many different avenues of thoughts and beliefs and letting someone go down the path of a certain belief that just ends up destroying them or thinking that that's gonna you know they're destroying other people is the right thing to do. And like and just hold up one second, one second.
Yeah, one second. Well what what do you mean by destroying going down a belief that would destroy them?
I mean, I don't wanna I don't wanna say in particular, I mean, I have ideas in my head, but again, I didn't want to like pick on any one religion, but I'm just saying like destructive in a sense.
I'll just say destructive in the sense that they either justify the harming of themselves physically, I don't know, like self-flagulation or flagellation or something like that, like needing to put yourself into a mindset of lifelong pain and struggle, but you're doing that to yourself because that's that's what you have assessed the nature of reality is, and you you believe a text found you and you were ordained to be find or find that text, and all other texts are wrong, all other ways are wrong.
So it's like, okay, so I need to put myself in pain and suffering for the rest of my life in order to get a chance to get to like heaven or the other side. And then that's the self-destruct destructive part, and then the external destructive part, like putting on other people, is the idea that your religious beliefs are so strong and you have to show your religious beliefs by going out and suppressing, hurting, or just killing, just outright killing other people who don't follow what you believe. And and I I I'll try to tie it back into our main discussion of like ghosts and spirits.
And the way I would do that is like, well, going back to the whole idea that that people in other religions or different religions have to, they have this feeling that they need to do something to take themselves out of the path of life to pay attention to the other side by giving offerings or whatever. So they themselves avoid some negative effect to their family on this side or the other side.
And all the while, while there's different groups of people coming to these similar conclusions about like a negative, austere approach to existence, other people around them are trying to live a different way, but there's no real guidance from seemingly no real guidance from the other side, even from like maybe like say a ghost person.
So it almost seems like when you get to the other side, if there are ghosts who are affecting this reality, they might still hold on to these same beliefs that they had in this life, and they're just trying to perpetuate that similar belief because they don't know any more on the other side that they knew on this side of reality or this side of life. And that's a terrifying thought too.
Like, well, you just pop out of existence in this life and you show up in Shaol or whatever, like you show up somewhere as a ghost and you're stuck there, and you're like, you're just as lost as you were in this life, and then you but you're like, well, I gotta do something, I gotta, you know, and then they start fading into the original narrative that they believed in this life, and and and I don't know, like that just bothers the shit out of me.
So if I if I understand what you're trying to say, you're basically saying someone follows a set of beliefs where they physically harm themselves for the sake of their faith, and they get others to do it, and then they die and they go to the other side, and it's totally not what they expected it to be, and therefore they're pissed, and it's like, well, what do I do now? Are you trying to say that is in turn how we can get like ghosts or spirits or angry ghosts in some form or fashion, in which they're like, What the fuck?
Like, I don't this is not what I believed in, so I am not gonna go to the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. I am not gonna go to the other side. I'm just gonna stick around in this plane.
Is that what you're trying to get to, or did I kind of I think that's a mirror of what I was saying, and I I think you just brought up a really good point that I didn't consider that mirror side of what I was saying.
I think that that sounds even more realistic than what I was bringing up, but what I was saying was like, let's just imagine you are so involved in your personal faith to the degree that you're hurting yourself physically or other people, you get to the other side, and it's not like you're it's not like you you believed one religion and suddenly you're presented with a totally other god or something who's interacting with you and saying everything you did is wrong. That's possible.
That you know, it's not like you ran into Anubis, right?
Yeah, exactly. And then you're just pissed off. You're like, I gotta go back and you know, make spread my pissed off behavior back on humans and make them pay because I, you know, got screwed over. But what I was saying is like, imagine you show up on the other side and it's just like a barren desert wasteland and there's no other direction whatsoever any more than there was direction in this life. So what are you gonna like latch on to? You're gonna latch on to what you had in this life, thinking that you need to do something more or affect something else.
So if you grew up in this life and you spent this life doing something one way and you show up, you might draw the conclusion that I need to if I have the power to reach back into this reality and that's what I need to do, then then I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna come back as a malevolent ghost or or I'm gonna make my family pay for doing something that left me here or something like that. I I mean that might be an avenue for why we have negativity coming back to curse people or ghosts or whatever, and then there's nobody else higher than that who's willing to to correct it.
It almost kind of feels like we're left in the dust either way, until maybe we do go into that proverbial light and choose to pass on. Okay, but again, like how can we possibly have this conversation when we don't even know anything whatsoever about the nature of reality and what we're supposed to be doing here? I mean, from the Gnostic Gnostic perspective, it seems almost like we are plaything in a way. It's I mean, I know it's such a dark approach, and I don't want to go too off the rails with that. That's probably a deeper conversation for another day.
But it just seems like if you look at the broader perspective of all of humanity and you factor in things like ghosts or demons or evil spirits or whatever that come back, or even positive spirits, it's almost like it's like the other side still doesn't know what reality is about, even on the other side.
And so they're just latching on to whatever belief structure or whatever they think they can do to affect this life to get them something else on the other side that that you know, getting closer to what they think life or existence should be on the spiritual side, if that if that makes sense. I don't know. Just trying to reach the straws.
I mean, if you look at the thought patterns that were emerging during Second Temple Judaism, it goes a lot worse than that. Because we are playthings between the adversary and God. I mean, Ahriman is quoted to saying, turn your creatures against you and make them hate you. The idea that the world is the playground of the devil and we are just kind of pawns in the game, it's a very old idea and definitely persists to this day. Back to not sleeping well at night, man. It gets even weirder when you bring in other kinds of divine creatures.
Because if you start to mix the fleshly with the spirit, then you get abominations like the Nephilim, who, even after their mortal bodies are murdered, they can still float around in the atmosphere forever, and nobody, even God, can take care of them. What?
Yeah, that's a strange concept. Why? So that's one of the inevitable conclusions a reader can draw from the book of Enoch, especially the first section, because you know, the Watchers came down, they had sex with the daughters of humanity, they birthed the Nephilim, who began to screw everything physically and metaphorically and devour anything they can get their hands on. The people cried out not only from this, but from all of the forbidden knowledge they were taught, and God then sends the deludes in order to clean out the earth.
Only problem is that you know Gabriel was sent down to lead the Nephilim into war against one another. They all die by each other's hands, but yet the spirits of the Nephilim are released into the atmosphere because they are half divine, half spirit, half mortal. So the mortal side go goes, the spirit side stays, and they're just left free floating in the atmosphere. And you even find reference to them within um the Essenes who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls. They're one of the major categories of evil that you must watch out for on the four days of trouble.
Is that where the concept of aliens being Nephilim comes from?
If you are abjectly stupid enough to believe that, maybe, but then again, something that's seriously gone wrong in your brain. I was waiting for that.
This, you know, this just leads me to my next question for you, JJ, which is could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that he himself could not eat it?
And wait, hold you locking it to Aquanus level theological discussions and riddles.
But the thing you brought up about the idea that God couldn't even touch the Nephilim if he wanted to remind me of the idea that, and I think I like I don't know if this is true or not, but I think one of the founding fathers, it was it uh Thomas Jefferson. Can't I can't remember the name of the belief structure deism. And correct me if I'm wrong, but like the gener one of the general tenets of that is the belief that God set in motion all of the factors of reality and existence in this universe.
And just left it alone.
And left it alone, yeah, and he cannot reach into this reality to affect anything whatsoever. So I guess that is the way that you could approach that thought. And it kind of fits neatly with what we were saying earlier about like ending up on the other side and still not knowing what the hell is going on, um, or getting any assistance or help from that level.
But man, that is such a I mean, I think to me, that kind of concept, I don't know about deism as a whole, because I don't know everything about it, but that that's what makes the most sense to me from a spiritual side about the nature of existence is if you are a being, an all-know all-knowing, all-powerful being that sets something into motion and everything is supposed to play out a certain way, you know, like um uh what's the what's the word? Um not fortune, um destiny.
Everything everything destined to play out a certain way as based off of a certain religious text or belief structure, by reaching in and effecting a change, you're and you're actually going against your own creation and therefore going against yourself. So it almost seems like there could be no help or assistance that could be reached in from the positive side. But then maybe that's the answer of like, you know, the the angels coming down and changing our reality or being the messengers of certain religions or whatever.
But it seems like once you get to the threshold of God as the idea of God creating the universe, it just doesn't make sense to me that if you pray to God, God is gonna be able to do anything. Because if God reached into this reality, any change whatsoever is gonna be a butterfly effect that affects the free will of anybody else. Even if it's the mind, like the tiniest little, I'm gonna pop out this neuron or this little tiny little tidbit of reality out of existence. It's gonna completely change the narrative.
And it seems to me that if you did that, then free will, the idea of free will would be completely out. So maybe it's maybe it's possible that free will does exist, and the only reason free will can exist is because a creator cannot reach in and change anything and make anything different. So that I mean that that's just like fucking deep and hard to think about.
But but the only thing I would say to that is if you are Catholic or a Christian, there was an attempt. One could argue that Jesus was that attempt, right? You know, to steer people in the Trinity a certain direction, and there'd be multiple.
I mean, depending upon your faith, you would recognize the prophets as being divinely influenced, Christ is being divinely influenced. If you're Muslim, then Muhammad would be another instance of that.
Sorry, guys, so you could say there could have potential. Been multiple attempts and throughout the different prophets, throughout the different religions. I mean, even in Hinduism, with you know, the avatars of Vishnu, with Krishna, Rama. Right, yeah. Coming to physically interact with the world in some form or fashion.
Yeah, I mean because they had to? I don't know, had to, but I mean take the oldest religion that we know of, Zoroastrianism. You got Zodathustra, who came in and completely reorganized everything and put a new spin on everything. Um, that could be another manifestation of it. But I don't think it's so much like the I would say that um deism was kind of an early response to being able to marry the ideas of scientific advancement with religious thought to make them able to cohabitate with each other. Yeah. But I don't think it would so much that God can't reach in and interfere.
It's more of a free will type of situation where, you know, if if you're going to create creatures that are going to only sing the divine one's praises, then they are not doing so if they do not have the capability for free will. And let's not forget the best parenting technique of you don't stop your kid from touching a hot stove, you just let them do it and let them figure it out on the first time. You shouldn't do that, right, little Billy.
So yeah, I I grew up with the uh the statement from my parents. If you don't listen, you're gonna have to feel yeah. You have to live, you're gonna have to deal with the consequences of your actions.
Yeah, take that fork, stick it in the electrical outlet. Let's see how much fun you have. Why do I feel like you did that? I did I did touch a stove, but that's when I was like barely crawling around, and my mom had to rush me to the emergency room and got shot by a cop and therefore had a cop escort to the emergency room. It was lovely.
That's what gets me about the limitations of of humans, though, because like from our existence, it's so it's so easy to be like, well, you're an adult, you should know better. You you know, but we only know better within the context of our reality and like the little blip that we're here on this planet. And if you compare that cosmically or on on like an infinite level on a spiritual level, it almost seems like we wouldn't even touch an iota of that understanding until we're brought higher by some other being.
So, like if you that and the reason I bring that up because JJ is a perfect example of like when you were a baby, you touched the stove and you got badly hurt, but you're a baby. Like, you know, a baby's gonna keep touching the stove over and over again because it's predisposed to or pre-pre uh it's in its brain to explore and whatever, and it's not gonna remember. It has whatever, all these other factors going on, and it's gonna keep touching the stove.
So my whole thing is like, yeah, you're an adult, you're able to think and grow, like, you know, react a certain way, you should know better. But when you talk about the higher side, it almost seems like we're infinitely infants because we're just never gonna be understanding until we're elevated by some deity or some other side to understanding a higher level. And that's just where my my thought process goes.
Uh I mean just zoom out of our on our current education system. I mean, most people in this country read at what, a sixth grade level? Terrifying. I can barely read anything remotely complex. It's a scary, scary prospect. I mean, I I think that we're three reasonably educated individuals, and I don't know. I mean, I can't imagine. No, you're not.
You like to make fun of yourself, Ju Bobby. You're not. Like, okay, this is the last thing I'll say to to add on to that, tie it back in, but that's that kind of like feeds into even more so what I've been thinking about with with this position on on the nature of reality and and humans never being able to reach a higher level in this plane.
And it seems like if there was a God, like the same context of a God as like Judeo-Christianity, it seems like that God doesn't favor education or technology or human advancement, you know, bettering bettering ourselves because so many people don't have that luxury of getting it. But then that goes back to the whole idea of like, well, we're supposed to make our own utopia, we're supposed to help each other. And then you get back to the question of like, well, the nature of existence, good and evil.
But then it just seems like there are certain aspects about us and our understanding and advancement that just don't, they're not applicable to the natural progression of an individual human. It's the entire collective for thousands of years of human history. And the only way that you, me, and JJ, or like all three of us, are able to talk like this and and orate and pontificate or whatever, articulate, like the only reason we're able to do this is because we had an education system in this time and place.
But if we were, if we were all shat out a thousand years ago into the back ends of whatever, like we would be running around like nomads and we might have an interesting thought or two and a couple uggs or whatever, but like we are so it's like it's not a natural part of human progression to be this educated. And it seems like education and discussion and open-mindedness is kind of the best way we have right now to move towards a better existence, if that makes sense.
So I have a couple of things you said. Yeah. One, uh I'm gonna have to disagree with you on the concept of let's just keep it to the Christian God, right? Being against advancement and progression. Um, the only reason I say that is because sticking to the belief in theory, God gives us our spirit, our soul, correct? Is that is that right, JJ? I'm using you as my source of truth. Yeah, technically. Technically. So he gives us that. We're born, and as we're born and we go through life, we, you know, learn, and some people are naturally more gifted than others.
They invent things, they think of things outside of the box. Is that not a direct correlation to your creator? Because he created you. Why would you be pissed at me if you created me in a specific form or fashion? And I'm like hyper intelligent now, and I'm creating microphones and all this other shit. Like, why why would you be mad? It's like, yeah, it's like you gave me a toolbox and I used a toolbox. Like, what did you want me to like?
Yeah, and Dean, I I wouldn't say that it's God that is responsible for our lack of education, I would put that solely just upon our own shoulders.
Yeah, that's our fault. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I should I should have been I should have done better as I didn't mean to say that God would be against or the idea that God is against humans learning, I just seems like a level of indifference because in the same way that everyone's given, say, like a heart to pump blood through the body, and sometimes the heart doesn't work very well or whatever, and they don't live as long. But everybody has everyone who lives has a heart and it's pumping blood mechanically through the body, and that's a very integral part of the human existence to be alive.
But it seems like there is an indifference of like in intelligence. What I mean to say is intelligence doesn't seem to be an integral or important part in the process of reaching a higher level of religion or a higher level of spirituality, but the the the difficult i i it it it's all dependent on well, let me put it this way you and I have talked many a times in person about history, everything.
And one thing what's the one thing that I always tell you that's the constant throughout history with humanity? We stay the same. What changes? Just our technology. We are no different from the ancient Romans, the ancient Greeks, the ancient Israelites, the ancient Egyptians.
That's why we all of our sitcoms still come from Roman place. Yeah.
Right. I mean, the way that we speak and think, I think there's an innate way that humans operate, just based off of our genetics and how we're built and how we are as social creatures. I mean, it I wouldn't be shocked if we went time traveled to a pub 2,000 years ago or a thousand years ago in medieval Europe, and you just had these guys drinking meat or beer having a similar conversation. So I think, but back to the whole concept of progression and everything, it's really all dependent on what the people in control of that religion are trying to do.
That's because if you go to the crusades, the main one of the main reasons for the crusades is because like we're tired of knights fucking killing each other in their backyard. So just send them somewhere else to go kill each other. And then that blooms into something completely out of proportion with the kingdom of Jerusalem and Principality of like Antioch and all these different things that crop up out of it. We we can't forget to include the human element. Everything sounds amazing until you insert the variable of humanity.
Humanity has this skill of fucking things up because of just how we're built. I had a conversation with our friend Willie on the concept of are humans born naturally good? Or is that something we have to learn? And we went back and forth for a little bit. I said, I think we're born good, and it's just your environment that affects how you become as a person. But again, the human element.
What it again, when we talk about when we go, when we use our favorite term, circle back to the concept of demons and and ghosts, and why some Christians reject that category of ghosts entirely, and it's all demons and everything, it's the human variable. That to me is what will it it will always come down to. Humans will justify, will do mental gymnastics to justify their stupidity at great lengths and to justify their belief.
We've got flat earthers that I think it says it all right then and there. And they're just even though their theory was proven wrong 2,000 years ago, they still adequately, you know, go forth and proclaim their idiotic to the world. But I I would like the three of us to have a tangential episode around political philosophy, and the especially the idea of progression with political philosophy. Because I uh I I think it would be like all of these, all of these things that you're bringing up, Dean, around the idea of progress and people moving forward, people not moving forward.
You can trace all of that all the way down from you know Thomas Hobbes to John Locke, all the way up to John Rawls in the 1880s. I mean, uh even Emmanuel Kant. But the last thing I was gonna say is that uh I think Kant said it best when he said that humanity has a category for everything except for God, and for that there is only faith. Yeah, I think that's kind of true.
If we're only allowed to have free will and nothing else, and nothing can influence that free will, then there is going to be no guidance or heavy-handedness or even gentle nudges in the right direction, and you're forced to find that out all on your own. And are people born good? I don't know, but I do know that we're all born self-centered and we only have one perspective, ourselves. And that is always the recipe for trouble.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's the nature, that's the nature of all living things, right? Like that's that's the existence we live in where you consume something else to keep yourself going, whether it's uh, you know, a piece of mold or a 200-pound buck, you know, it's it's you gotta you gotta ingest something to keep going. And that's inevitably taking away from other existences. And that that's what makes life um a little bit dark in my opinion.
And that also kind of feeds into the idea that I don't I I really don't think and I hope that this isn't I I hope we're not in reality in the sense that this is a end all be all one shot, one chance life for humans for each of us, because to me, what everything we just talked about, what that means is a huge amount of people will inevitab inevitably be fodder and cast to the wind and destroyed or whatever for this to work out a certain way where this is the only life we have. And because Chris, you you hit the nail on the head when you said how we're built.
And that's what I was getting at originally, and I can't wait to talk more about this on the political episode, but like how we're built, and from the religious perspective, if it is a singular God creating all of human existence and all of existence in general, then the building seems counterintuitive or counterproductive for having the chance for every single person to reach the state that they're they're meant to reach, if if there is like an idea of a ju uh uh an all-knowing God, just like, you know, as an example of a Christian God or something like that.
So this has been an awesome episode. I cannot freaking wait. I have not touched like Hobbes and Kant and all that stuff in like a decade, but I constantly think about like my favorite example is like the unicorn, about how like unicorns don't exist, and the only reason they do exist in our heads is because we've taken pieces from our actual reality where like, oh, there's narwhals that exist, horses exist, rainbows exist. So let's just take all these disparate parts and smack them together and create something that doesn't exist, and then people believe them. Oh, I do.
Yeah, there's there's definitely unicorns out there. There's there are people who believe unicorns are real.
Uh but that's like I think you can like a national animal, believe it or not, and it's true.
It's crazy awesome. But like that's the whole conversation you could tie into the political side and the way our brains interpret information and reality and how we have to take little pieces and smoosh them together to make an understanding. And maybe that's how you get these holes in religion and stuff, because we're making we're trying to make the best sense we can of our existence and our consciousness, which apparently we're the only ones on this planet who have a conscious or a conscious awareness of the self, at least to the the depth that we have in communication.
But it's just kind of like we're left whether there's no other side or not, but that's debatable. In what way?
A conscious self, that's debatable.
Oh, you mean like if we're real or not? No, just like conscious is real.
So you're you're oh, you're talking about it from that perspective. I thought you meant like a conscious animal, like pig.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I just meant like at the level because there's a certain threshold of um understanding and interpreting the self, but in the context of like um being able to have a discussion. I don't know. Yeah, we can talk about that more at a at a later time, but that's um that's a whole other can of worms, obviously.
Yeah, but there was a couple of things I wanted to quickly say, and maybe we could close out with the question I have for you, JJ. One thing that's one, um sorry for derailing your your uh your path, buddy. We we tend to do that a lot.
I I think that this was a worthy, you know, set of topics to talk about more than anything else. So I'm glad it happened.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. The other thing that's really I don't want to say it's bothering me, but it's something I'm just gonna it's gonna linger in my mind is the stuff with the Nephilim, it's like okay, they were white, but since they were partly divine, that they just linger spiritually and even God can't get rid of them. That doesn't make sense.
I think that that's ultimately I think why because the book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees within at least Second Temple Judaism was considered scripture, it was canon, and I think that's one of the major reasons beyond the fact that they were written pseudopigraphally by a false epitaph, they were no longer considered that. And Enoch, it's just this wide gaping hole in theology that it exposes. So you're saying that something that is of spirit cannot be cleaned by God? I think it's a very fair question.
It doesn't make any sense because if God made the angels and the main the angels had kids with human women, they're still by that link creations of God should be able to wipe them out.
I'm just saying, or maybe that's why we have the demon slayer core to kill the I said it before, and I'll say it again, all of the religious sex out there with these stories is just the way of ancient humans for like their way of writing comic books and just like coming up with these characters and like all this complexity and adding on to it. It's just like, man.
And JJ, the last question I have that I'll kind of go back to the beginning of the episode, um, and I'll just leave it for you to answer and close it out is based off of everything that we discussed from the perspective of, you know, ghosts, spirits, necromancy, the other plane, like why does it matter if that exists? Like to me, it doesn't, it doesn't it it's not harmful. To me, it would only be harmful is if you're going to look for trouble with it.
But that that's just how I I I you know I thoroughly agree with that sentiment. I would say that it's probably if I think about it, it's probably the words of Job in which you will find people that kind of point to you that says, Aha, this is why there are no spirits. So in Job 7, 8 through 10, uh, you see that as the cloud fades and vanishes, so so those who go down to Sheol do not come up, they return no more to their houses, or do nor do their places know them anymore.
And in 1412, so mortals lie down and do not rise again until the heavens are no more, they will not awake or be roused out of their sleep. So that seems to speak against the possibility of spirits, but ultimately, why do you care? I think it goes back to this idea of worldview. If this has become a part of your bedrock, then you simply cannot accept that. If it goes so fundamentally against your deep down, you know, you were taught this as a kid, you know it can't be true, blah, blah, blah.
It would invalidate so much crap if you actually did try to accept it, then it's just speaking about the individual person more so than anything else.
That's well said, man. And the another episode maybe we could have is it could go along the lines of just because you learn new things doesn't mean you have to wholesale drop what you believe. I mean, we have all of these discussions. I've talked to many people of different faiths. And And at the end of the day, I'm still Catholic. I'm like, okay, that's cool. I'm like willing to learn. I don't know. Does that make me ignorant or does that just make me comfortable with what I believe in?
I think it would be a same way when I go to Japan. I don't have a problem visiting my local ginja and showing the Kami Sama respect and praying and throwing coins into the offering box. It doesn't bother me at all. Because I mean, ultimately, if you take a literal reading of the Decalogue, thou shalt have no other gods before me, it doesn't mean that there are no other gods. It simply means you're not going to honor them above the god. I mean, ancient Judaism was not monotheistic, it was absolutely polytheistic in nature.
That's why you see a ton of those memes of people dancing and it's like making fun of the golden calf scene.
I remember the one that you sent to me on Instagram.
Yeah.
God I miss TikTok.
Yeah. I think that's another that's another uh another episode we could potentially have the concept of other gods and deities. I mean, the one thing that I didn't mention, I know we're trying to close out, but the last thing I'll say is like could the Greek gods be based off of the whole spirit thing? They turn it in. Damn it. Why? Why why do you have to do this?
No, no, no, it's too much. That's a whole that's gonna be kidding.
That's this is an open up a whole can of worms. No, but yeah, I think that's another topic we should explore along.
If you listen to Coast to Coast AM, Nephilim, or the secret oligarchy that is controlling the world, and you know, if you only go far enough into the hollow earth or the flat earth, then you will see that, and whatever other random bullshit will make them two dollars on their self-published book. I don't know.
I just I haven't listened to Coast to Coast since Art Bell died, so no interest in that.
That's the way it should be. I have tried, and it was the most painful experience I can remember.
All right, but Mr. JJ, why don't you uh take us out?
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