But we no longer think or speak in those terms anymore.

The Lord helps those who help themselves.

Turn the story around on yourself.

What images do you think your optic nerve might produce with long bouts of solitary confinement, dehydration, malnutrition, light deprivation, sleep deprivation, and or extreme physical and emotional stress? Or what also might your brain imagine that your eyes saw the day before?

Is it possible something might happen slong neural pathways that were formed when you were very young?

Years later, what would you remember about the experience and what would you forget? Do you think your memories would be accurate?

Do you think it's a mere coincidence that so many "holy men" with "visions" in history are fasting hermits?

Remember the old commercial: is it live or is it Memorex? Are you absolutely certain your young childhood visual memories are real or were they partly affected by hearing others tell the story to you vividly and piecing it together with family snapshots?

What is REM sleep for? What are dreams for? What is consciousness anyways? How come all those near death stories have tunnel and light thingies? Etc. etc. You get the drift.

I think everyone should refer back to this thread before thinking on yours: Focus on the Family asks its admirers to change god's mind, by Tankard. It has some stuff on it that is quite applicable. (BTW, I agree with the commenters there that said it was a fine discussion thread and also that it reminded them of the old TPMCafe where some people dared to talk about other stuff besides political news.)

Now it's true that far too many people in this day and age in apparent perfect health and with reasonably comfortable lifestyles still see a vision of the Blessed Mother in a piece of toast as if this is still early 20th-century Fatima, Portugal.

But aren't we talking about something else in this case, the "no atheists in foxholes" thing?

Brain science, it's a mystery, you've got to have faith that some day soon they are going to figure it all out. :-)

Oh, and on this--

Have any of you seen an angel?

In thousands and thousands and thousands of exquisite works of art in many media from many cultures and civilizations over a very long time. They are man's muse; to me, that's the proof. They are probably simply a bunch of neurons inhabiting certain brains, but that is existence, is it not?

When the child was a child, it didn’t know that it was a child, everything was soulful, and all souls were one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wings_of_Desire

Director Peter Eötvös explains: "In the opera version, I put less emphasis on the political line than Kushner...I rather focus on the passionate relationships, on the highly dramatic suspense of the wonderful text, on the permanently uncertain state of the visions."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_in_America