Healings In UFO And Other Non-Christian Contexts (Part 2)

Picking up where I left off in my last post, I want to respond to chapter 6 in Rey Hernandez, et al., edd., Beyond UFOs (United States: The Dr. Edgar Mitchell Foundation, 2018). The chapter was written by Joseph Burkes, a retired doctor and UFO researcher, and Preston Dennett, a UFO researcher, and it addresses alleged healings that occurred in the context of UFO experiences. They examine ten cases and discuss some other research on the topic.

Healings In UFO And Other Non-Christian Contexts (Part 1)

Because Christians have been so negligent about paranormal issues for so long, they're poorly prepared to address a large number and variety of the topics involved. I've discussed some examples in my most recent posts, in response to the release of Jonathan Kendall's The Metaphysics Of UFOs (Woodbury, Minnesota: Llewellyn Publications, 2026).

One of the subjects Christians tend to handle poorly is the existence of healings and some other miracles in non-Christian, and sometimes more specifically non-Protestant, contexts. Healings affiliated with UFOs are part of that category.

Does ending UFO experiences by appealing to Jesus prove that the experiences were demonic and provide evidence for Christianity?

My last post cited some material from Jonathan Kendall's new book on UFOs. I want to quote another part of the book that's relevant to a different topic I've addressed before. I'll quote my comments in an earlier post, then quote Jonathan's book.

The Humanness Of UFOs

Jonathan Kendall just published The Metaphysics Of UFOs (Woodbury, Minnesota: Llewellyn Publications, 2026). I'm agnostic about or disagree with some portions of it, but it has a lot of useful information. I want to cite some parts of the book in the coming days.

Creating A Ghost

In a post last week, I mentioned the possibility that an apparition of the dead involves a place memory or an appearance of a deceased human rather than a demon. I want to discuss another explanatory option.

Problems With Attributing Too Much To Demons

Since Christians so often suggest that something or other is demonic, and much of the time they seem to do it with a lot of carelessness, it's worth considering the problems with falsely attributing things to demons. My focus here will be on attributing paranormal activity to demons, but the principles I'll be discussing also have a broader application. I'm not trying to be exhaustive. I'm just providing some examples:

What if Christian miracles don't come from God?

In a recent podcast, Stand To Reason addressed the following question:

"All supposed revelation of religions involves a subjective experience of receiving that revelation, so how do we know the biblical authors (Moses, the prophets, etc.) were interpreting their experiences correctly as opposed to Mohammed or Joseph Smith?"

I don't know how much the questioner was thinking of something like a scenario in which Christianity is a demonic deception. But that objection comes up occasionally and doesn't get addressed much, so I want to take this opportunity to address it again. Go here for a couple of comments I wrote on the topic a few years ago, then read this one that I wrote shortly afterward. The second thread just linked also has some comments from Hawk on the subject. For a response to the notion that Christian miracles are just manifestations of human paranormal capacities, see here.

I've given a couple of examples above, namely demons and human paranormal abilities. But the same principles are applicable to other non-Divine sources (e.g., an alien trying to deceive us). A Christian just has to argue that God is the best explanation, not that no other explanation is possible.

Problems With A Demonic View Of Near-Death Experiences

I've said before that many Christians, including Evangelicals, have a problem with attributing too much to demons. It's a problem in multiple contexts, such as people blaming their sins on alleged demonic influence, but the context I'm focused on here is the paranormal. It's commonplace for Evangelicals to allege that a variety of paranormal phenomena are demonic or to give the demonic hypothesis too much attention and to give alternative views too little attention. I've often noted that Christians typically seem ignorant of some of the major explanatory options, such as a non-personal source, like we see with the stone tape hypothesis or place memories. It's also common for Christians to dismiss deceased humans (ghosts) as an explanatory option, even though the Bible is so supportive of the existence of ghosts. And we have good reason to think living humans have paranormal abilities to some extent, and living humans are capable of evil, so that gives us further reason to not assume that any paranormal activity of an evil nature must be demonic. But demonic activity has become a simple (simplistic) explanation for many Christians, who apparently don't know much about the issues involved and don't want to know much.

The Value Of A Human Psi Hypothesis

Since I appealed to human paranormal activity as the best explanation of UFOs in my last post, in the process of commenting on Lue Elizondo's recent book, I thought I'd reiterate and expand upon an important point in that context. One of the values of a human psi hypothesis is that it includes both living and deceased humans. That can be thought of in contrast to what people often refer to as a living agent psi hypothesis, one that involves the paranormal activity of living humans. I believe in postmortem survival, because of the evidence for Christianity and for other reasons. So, I don't limit human activity to this life. One of the things that follows from including deceased humans in a paranormal explanation is that it allows for more advanced forms of paranormal activity while retaining the human element. A deceased human may have developed his paranormal abilities with the passing of time (which can span a lengthy period in the context of the afterlife), some of the actual or potential contexts of the afterlife can provide humans with knowledge or motives they wouldn't have in this life, etc. It's important that we keep in mind that a human psi hypothesis doesn't have to limit itself to living humans. That's one of the strengths of the hypothesis.

Christianity And Living Agent Psi

I've posted an Amazon review of Stephen Braude's recent book. The review repeats some of what I've said here, but also adds some comments on other subjects, such as the evidence Christianity provides for life after death.