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Sept. 30, 2013 - Art Bell

03:29:16

Dark Matter with Art Bell - UFOlogy, ET's and MJ-12 - Dr. Michael Heiser

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	🎵Music🎵 🎵BOOM🎵
	🎵Be it sight, sound, smell, touch, the something inside that we need so much🎵
	🎵The sight of a touch or the scent of a sound or the strength of an oak leaves deep in the ground🎵
	🎵The wonder of flowers to be covered and then to burst up through tarmac to the sun again🎵
	Or to fly to the sun without burning a wing?
	To lie in a meadow and hear the grass sing?
	To have all these things in our memories whole?
	To my right Ride, ride my seesaw
	Take this place on this trip Just for me
	Ride, take a free ride Take my place, have my seat
	It's for free I work like a slave for years
	Work so hard, judge you with my fears Not you in my life, the poor man
	But by now, I know, I should have Rode
	Wanna take a ride?
	From the high desert and the Great American Southwest, exclusively on Sirius XM Radio, this is Dark Matter with your host, Art Bell.
	Now, here's Art.
	You know what?
	Some things may change, but this is my new theme and I love it.
	In fact, when I hear this, it raises little hackles on the back of my neck.
	I don't even know what hackles are, but they're raised.
	I'll tell you that.
	Hey, everybody!
	Guess I've got to tell you about last Thursday, huh?
	When there was no show.
	No show!
	Did I have a hundred and three fever?
	Was I sweating in bed, coughing up... Well, you don't want to know.
	Was my liver failing?
	Was I having a very serious brain operation?
	No.
	None of the above.
	What happened is, I was laying in preparation for my show, laying down on the couch.
	About five o'clock, the phone rang, and it was a big honcho back at Sirius XM, and they said, Art, our lines are down.
	And, uh, so you're getting an extra day off.
	They said, what do you mean our lines are down?
	Well, their major programs in DC went down.
	They just went down.
	So, um, that's what happened.
	There were no phone lines of any kind.
	I guess earlier in the day, Dr. Laura went down and on and on and on.
	So that's what happened last Thursday.
	No, I was not ill.
	Except at not doing a program.
	But here I am.
	All right.
	I want a note.
	These are important things.
	You can email me.
	I'm artbell at artbell.com.
	Easy.
	It's on the website.
	Artbell at artbell.com.
	Twitter.
	Yes, you can follow me and I do make announcements on there.
	Not pronouncements.
	Announcements.
	I'm artbell51 on Twitter.
	And don't forget about the wormhole.
	You can wormhole me just like Bill has done here.
	Bill says, Hi Art.
	Wanted to voice my opinion on Hoagland and his anomalies on Mars.
	I bought into, literally, the phase on Mars.
	But not another one of his finds.
	Note that his number nine photo looks like all the rocks around it.
	Ho ho ho ho ho ho!
	Bill, really?
	Really?
	That's a wormhole message.
	You know, you bought into the face on Mars and some other stuff, I guess, but you can't buy in number nine?
	Oh, Bill.
	Since when, uh, when does, uh, the good Lord on Mars or Earth put a pipe in the middle of a rock, even if you consider that to be a rock, which I don't?
	Look real hard, Bill.
	There's a pipe there, sticking out horizontally.
	It's kind of hard to ignore.
	By the way, Richard will be here for an hour tomorrow night.
	He'll be talking about Comet ISON, which has turned green as it nears Mars.
	For some reason, instead of having a red influence, you would think by Mars, right?
	It's turned green.
	We'll find out what that means tomorrow night, along with a lot of other stuff about comets.
	SiriusXM is looking really hard into the possibility of a four-hour timeout being worked on.
	You know, so if you're listening to the stream, it won't, you know, disconnect you after 90 minutes.
	Roswell Zard, I'm so glad the show is back.
	This is email.
	My 11th grade Spanish teacher turned me on to the show back in 2001.
	Anyway, to address the inactivity timeout that everybody's having problems with, the listeners must click something within the player interface.
	Aha!
	Good tip.
	Not just move their mouse around the screen.
	The easiest way, and the least disruptive, is just double-click the pause button during a commercial break.
	Yeah, who cares if you mess up our commercials, right?
	Glad the show is back, and so forth and so on.
	Remember, if you want to say welcome back, folks, Roswells are the way to say it, instead of saying it.
	So they're working on this four-hour time-out thing, and we might get it to four hours.
	It'd be really cool.
	If you didn't, because I was not here last Thursday, we got this really cool thing up I wanted to tell you about last Thursday, regarding Scotty's Tower.
	Now, he moved that through a house, you know.
	And we had the photographs of it up, but what Scotty did was he made a video.
	It's kind of like a, I don't know, video slideshow, and it's really, really cool.
	You should go to Artbell.com and take a look at it.
	It's hilarious.
	Absolutely hilarious.
	Artbell.com, Scotty's video.
	You'll have to dig for it a little bit.
	Now, I think we're just going to call it Everybody's asking about this.
	Everybody.
	We're going to call it Dark Matter Halloween.
	And we're going to do nothing but ghost stories.
	Now, I have a couple of ideas about this and we do it every year.
	We're going to do it this year.
	What I want you to do If you can, of course we're going to take open lines, unscreened open lines.
	I think, wait a minute, maybe we will screen a little bit to be sure you have a ghost story.
	But if you want to email me, you can do so.
	And if you're going to email me and you have a really good ghost story, include your phone number and we may call you.
	So that's a way to get some of the really, really, really good ones in.
	So if you've got one, email me, artbell at artbell.com.
	Include your phone number, and on Dark Matter Halloween, your phone may ring, and it may be us.
	Well, I checked about, I don't know, 15 minutes ago, turned on CNN briefly.
	The countdown clock was still going.
	Are we launching to Mars?
	No.
	We're counting down to the close of the government.
	Again.
	It's interesting, I've noticed that Congress now has a 10% approval rating, higher actually than Satan himself.
	Oh, by the way, if they do close the government up, It's so sad, isn't it, that agencies like the IRS will close?
	Oh, but wait!
	They won't!
	The IRS!
	Even though our state parks are gone.
	Trying to apply for a passport, forget it.
	But the IRS will stay open.
	Essential to national security?
	Oh, boy.
	It's been said that when you're one step ahead of the crowd, you're a genius!
	When you're two steps ahead, you're a crackpot.
	Alright, looking around the world very briefly, inspectors charged with the enormous task of overseeing the destruction of Syria's deadly chemical weapons stockpiles kicked off their mission Monday, racing to meet tight deadlines against the backdrop of civil war, and probably also racing To catch up with the people who are trying to move the weapons around, I would think.
	Syria says it is fighting rebels who eat human hearts.
	Serious about this.
	Syria's foreign minister claimed Monday that his government is fighting a war against al-Qaeda-linked militants who eat human hearts.
	And dismember people while they're still alive, then send their limbs to family members.
	I thought that was an old Russian trick.
	Nearly three dozen migrants marched across the U.S.-Mexico border without papers on Monday.
	The latest group of a younger generation brought to the U.S.
	illegally as children seeks to confront head-on immigration policies they consider unjust.
	Good luck with the government doing anything about that, or anything else, including even continuing past midnight eastern.
	Now, listen, I've got to... just in case there is a last moment resurrection, and the government is going to stay open in case they vote the right way, be sure and wormhole me right away, please.
	That just doesn't come out right, doesn't matter how you say it.
	Send me a wormhole message if they suddenly keep the government open, alright?
	This is a very, very interesting story.
	Credit to the Anomalist.
	Authentic alien images from Roswell finally found?
	Does that end in a question mark?
	Yes.
	The UFO iconoclast.
	These images exist as Kodachrome slides And Anthony Regalia, late of the Roswell Dream Team, hopes to set the record straight on the truth and what's a lie surrounding the leaked stories in the past week.
	There have been rumors everywhere of new, real Roswell photographs.
	Thing is, though, Anthony says they're not going to release them to the general public since the owners are put off by some unprofessional ufologists.
	Is it a shell game to maintain interest in Roswell by teasing all of us?
	Or are the slide's owners genuinely creeped out by the unwanted invasion of their privacy?
	Well, I'd go for the latter.
	This is fireball time, folks!
	I mean serious fireball time!
	A huge fireball explosion created a power outage and a lot more in Yucatan, Mexico.
	That was Sunday evening last night.
	A weird sky phenomena broke up the monotony of a small Maya town as a huge object, thought to be a fireball, And you can tell me what it is, because you're going to be able to see it.
	It lit up the skies over the town of Iqmul in the southern Yucatan around 8.30 p.m.
	local time.
	The falling object was accompanied by a strong thundering noise, loud blast, when it hit the ground.
	And it did hit the ground.
	Now, the crash That's the word used here, was followed by flashing blue hazes, if you can imagine that, flashing blue hazes, and a power outage.
	The flames were observable until about 2 a.m.
	at the object's landing site.
	See, they used the word landing there.
	The sky phenomena was also observed in several other Mexican townships.
	What was it?
	We don't know.
	As you can imagine, people got totally freaked out by all this.
	And they found stuff.
	Now, you can see this thing, or these things.
	I'll leave it up to you.
	You take a look.
	Of course we've got photographs.
	Something pretty good-sized crashed in Yucatan.
	If you go to artbell.com, you can take a look-see at it.
	Now, the police there were toying with some of the debris of whatever in the hell this was.
	By the way, maybe one of you can name it for me.
	I have no idea what this thing is.
	It looks like number nine.
	Well, not really.
	But you get the idea, right?
	Pretty big.
	Whatever it was, it came down, was pretty darn big.
	Space debris?
	Maybe.
	And the police were playing around with some of the debris and there is the picture of a human-like figure made of the debris.
	Now, whether the police did that or it came that way, I don't know.
	Other fireballs, I'll tell you tomorrow, we're out of time here.
	Other fireballs in Ohio.
	So, it's like we're in Fireball City here, folks.
	I mean, lots and lots of fireballs.
	I'm not sure what's going on.
	But keep your eye on the sky, huh?
	All right, well, I'm not going to take any more of Mike Heiser's time.
	He is our guest tonight, Mike Heiser, and he will be coming up in just a very few moments.
	Ah.
	The number one song, actually, of all time.
	You know that, right?
	From the high desert and the great American southwest, this is dark matter raging in the nighttime.
	The Earth is a beautiful place.
	I know you've deceived me, now here's a surprise I know that you have, cause there's magic in my eyes
	I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles Oh yeah, if you think that I don't know about the tricks
	you play I never see you when you look at me, but you look at me
	when you lie in bed Well here's a broken tooth, you're gonna choke on a tooth
	You're gonna lose that smile, because you're the wild I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles
	To call Art Bell, please manipulate your communication device and call 1-855-REAL-UFO.
	That's 1-855-732-5836.
	Oh, man, everybody's a critic.
	Bill sends a message through the wormhole that says, Aw, come on, Art.
	Art Bell's Halloween?
	That isn't what I said.
	I said Dark Matter Halloween.
	Anyway, he goes on, how about something more creative, like Phantom Matters?
	Well, look, if any of you have a brilliant idea of what we can call it, then feel free, by all means, to suggest it to me in email, and if I like it, I'll change it.
	Nothing's written, you know, in stone here.
	Some of the things Mike Heiser talks about now, on the other hand, are written in stone.
	Mike Heiser is a scholar in the fields of biblical studies and the ancient Near East.
	He is currently the academic editor for Logos Bible Software in Bellingham, Washington, and serves as an adjunct professor at three colleges and universities.
	Mike has a PhD in Hebrew and Ancient Semitic Languages, along with two master's degrees in Biblical Studies and Ancient History.
	In 2005, he was named one of Fate Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in Ufology.
	Wish I'd seen that list.
	Mike is a well-known critic of ancient astronaut beliefs, and for having the majestic documents Tested by a computational linguist for authenticity, he is also known for his supernatural thriller, The Visat, which focuses on how an ET disclosure might impact traditional religious beliefs.
	Oh, we're going to have fun with that tonight.
	And how the alien question might be related to ancient texts, including, of course, the Bible.
	Mike, welcome to Dark Matter.
	Boyard, thanks for having me on.
	I just have to say, listening to you read the news is like listening to Vin Scully call a baseball game.
	Really?
	Oh, yeah.
	I've got to take a breath here.
	I don't want to sound like too much of a fanboy, but I'm just thrilled that you're back on the air.
	I don't know how you waited this long to come back, because it sounds like you just love it.
	Well, it's called a non-compete, Mike.
	Oh, man, I would have just been pulling my hair out.
	What little I have left, yes.
	Oh, it's great to hear you.
	Well, thank you.
	I've never received a compliment for just reading the news.
	I thought that was... No, it's... I don't know.
	I have hackles, too, you know, at your introduction.
	What part really got you?
	The eating of the hearts, was it?
	No, no, no.
	No?
	Oh, it's just rhythmic, you know.
	Yeah, just taking simple headlines and it's just it's our bell reading the news, you know, you could just go sort of sit there and listen to it for hours.
	Okay, it just brings back great, great memories, you know, for me, because I, I listened to you, you know, for years while I was in grad school, all by myself, I'm, I'm holed up as a security guard in my little shack or The genetics lab that I had to guard, and I'm listening to Art Bell.
	I know you mean that in the very best way.
	Oh, that's great.
	I know, but it makes me feel old.
	Well, I'm as old, the X number of years removed as you are, but it's just great to hear you again.
	All right, well then, listen to this, Mike, and then we'll come right back to you.
	Mr. Bell, this is an email.
	I'm so glad you're back on Sirius XM.
	Discovered your show about 15 years ago on a regular radio by accident.
	Enjoyed it very much.
	Get this, folks.
	I had originally heard your show on the island of Okinawa when I was a nine-year-old kid and we lived in Naha.
	My dad was a pilot in Vietnam.
	We were stationed on the rock.
	And you introduced me to the rock and roll music, became such a big part of my life.
	You were the first DJ I remember, and I had my little transistor radio I listened to with a single earpiece.
	Yeah, they referred to...
	Something I did while I was there, I was on a teeter-totter in a contest with a couple of Marines.
	I had a Navy guy as partner, and we were up against two Marines.
	And we went for 57 hours, something like that.
	Anyway, he ends the email.
	Remember now, he first heard me when he was nine years old.
	I'm 56 now, Art.
	And we'll always have a special place for Art Bell, my heart and mind.
	You're my Wolfman, Jack.
	Fifty-six years old now, and this person first heard me when they were nine.
	See?
	What you said is right down that alley.
	That's not quite that far, but that's pretty impressive.
	At least he didn't hear me when you were nine.
	Let's get started.
	I want to talk about ufology.
	I mean, did you hear the first story that I read about the Roswell?
	Have you heard these rumors?
	Oh yeah, I've heard them and I've read the, I'll be charitable here, the conflicting accounts of the story of the photos surfacing.
	Boy, this is just going to There's going to be a big fight.
	I mean, it's already been a big fight, but it's going to be a big fight.
	What would you say, Mike, this is just a sort of a what if, but if they released these Roswell photographs, they were authenticated and it was proven That we were visited by these creatures that, you know, who knows, probably were at Area 51 for a while or disposed of in some manner or are still alive.
	Whatever.
	In other words, real creatures.
	If it's proven, what will you say?
	Well, I would say I'm not terribly surprised.
	You know, personally, I don't have any Yeah, I don't really have any difficulty, you know, theologically or religiously, but on the heels of that, you know, that's me talking.
	I mean, I can say, well, I'm not real surprised, you know, that, you know, given this or that, that, you know, it's not really too much of a stretch.
	I mean, I look at it as an academic, and as an academic, I know that this question has been around literally, you know, for 2,000 years.
	It goes all the way back to Aristotle, you know, before this is pre-Christian.
	Are there other worlds?
	I mean, everybody's been talking about this for millennia.
	It's only really been recently that it's just become this scary thing, you know, for religious people.
	So I would try to get people to pay attention to the conversation that's been happening for so long and say, look, you know, it's a big deal because it is, you know, now we have, you know, evidence of this.
	As far as the discussion, I mean, this sort of just falls right into place.
	Then the questions change.
	They become different.
	It's not, are we alone or not?
	Then it's like, well, what does this mean?
	Where do they come from?
	Are there others?
	And all this sort of thing.
	I'd like to live in the Star Trek world where there's life elsewhere and so on and so forth.
	I'm known for just asking what I think are reasonable questions about evidence and things
	like that, but if we ever had it, I wouldn't be unenthusiastic about it at all, but that's
	me.
	Don't you think, Mike, don't you think that in this era of discovering suddenly hundreds
	and hundreds of exoplanets, you know, planets that are like Earth that could conceivably
	That's a major discovery, you've got to admit, in terms of the probability of life being discovered.
	Yeah, I think those kind of finds are better than something like the Drake Equation.
	I tend to be in the crowd that has a fairly low view of the Drake Equation because Explain for everybody the Drake Equation, please.
	Well, this is Frank Drake.
	The astronomer came up with a famous equation that tried to articulate the probability of life existing elsewhere.
	And that's a worthy thing to attempt.
	The problem with the Drake Equation is that every point of the equation was made up.
	In other words, there wasn't any data for it.
	Now, that's why I say this kind of thing.
	When we actually are starting to get data, there's X number of planets now that, you know, to the best of our scientific ability, will support life.
	That starts to fill in some of those gaps.
	And so when I think probability, if someone's talking to me about the Drake Equation, it's like, whatever.
	But if they're talking about discoveries like this, to me that helps.
	Okay, so in the last five years of the discovery of these exoplanets, changes the equation?
	Well, if you're making a pun there, yes.
	I would say, yeah, it changes the conversation in this way.
	I think the conversation on probability actually becomes more data-driven than a contrived equation.
	And I don't want to say contrived there in a negative sort of way, because I think it's worth trying to speculate.
	Without data, that's what you've got.
	You've got speculation.
	I think it's a reasonable conclusion, if it becomes a more reasonable conclusion, let's put it that way, if we have evidence that there are other places that, again, life as we know it could be sustained.
	It doesn't prove anything, but it does make the probability reasonable.
	For me, it gets it on the table.
	If we didn't have any sort of planet other than Earth that we could talk about in these And then we're going to have this probability discussion.
	Without that, to me, it doesn't even really deserve to get on the table.
	We're just looking at little dots of light and saying, man, it would be a great waste of space if there weren't.
	That's an emotional argument.
	I don't want to sound cold here, but I'd rather have data than the emotional argument.
	All right.
	Well, we're beginning to get that data.
	And with those planets, for example, I had somebody from SETI on, Seth Shostak from SETI.
	And, you know, they haven't heard anything yet, Mike.
	But it occurs to me that if there's all these exoplanets that are like Earth, capable of sustaining life, why do we suppose that life would evolve I don't know, the way we have technologically, and even have radio or TV, or even imagine it.
	I think that's a reasonable question to ask, and I've wondered that myself, and you and I aren't alone there.
	I mean, there are criticisms of SETI in that regard, that, why aren't you using a different strategy to look for this or that?
	So, you know, the truth is, The blunt truth is we don't really have any reason to make that assumption that they would be communicating the same way, but the reality is that's what's within our reach.
	It's a funding issue.
	It's a technology issue.
	It's a garnering enough interest to get people to care issue.
	All those things are part of the discussion.
	You would describe yourself how, as a skeptic?
	I would describe myself as someone who, again, would Would like these things to be true, but I want there to be real evidence for it.
	I'm not impressed with anecdotes.
	I'm not impressed with emotional arguments.
	I just like to know, and when I say I believe or think X, I'd like to have something concrete to sort of base that on, to fall back on.
	So with some people, that makes me a skeptic.
	With other people, especially in the more fundamentalistic wing of Christianity, what I've already said tonight is just awful, because there's this tendency to equate the whole question of extraterrestrial life with one of two things, and probably both, and that is the demonic realm, and then, well, you must buy into Darwinian evolution.
	And I'll confess, I'm not really disturbed by evolution.
	I don't really like materialistic Darwinism, but that's not the same as the idea of evolution.
	Are you convinced of evolution, Mike?
	Yeah, I think evolution is a reality.
	The question in my mind, there are questions in my mind like, to what extent, what mechanisms did it need?
	You know, I'm sort of at an advantage here, because when I was in graduate school, the place where I went to church was heavily, heavily populated by professors from the hard sciences at the university there, the University of Wisconsin.
	We had the head of environmental studies, we had the head of botany, we had two research physicists, we had a geologist, we had a professor of electrical engineering, we had another one in chemistry.
	I mean, people like me in the humanities were like completely outnumbered, and all of them were very serious, you know, about their faith, their theological commitments, and every one of them Accepted the idea that evolution, that's how God did it.
	No kidding.
	It's a no-brainer.
	They just didn't flinch about it.
	It was not trying to start a conversation with them.
	Well, what do you think about people who might be here, even in our church, or some colleague you have somewhere, or some acquaintance that don't agree.
	To them, it was just It wasn't even a sensible question to ask, but yet they were very serious.
	Well, I spent nine years in that environment, and so I just have to chuckle when I read things or hear things about how this is sort of an all-or-nothing proposition.
	We either have to accept this or that, the Bible or evolution.
	There's no in-between.
	It's like, I just know better.
	I know intellectually better because I read lots of stuff, but I know by experience as well.
	That these are not mutually exclusive things.
	I'm not a scientist.
	I have to depend on scientists to sift arguments for me.
	I read things that I appreciate on evolution.
	There's a lot of debate within the hard sciences about evolution.
	Evolutionists don't all agree.
	Isn't it easily said, Mike, that God may have started the process of evolution and that sort of cleans it all up right there?
	Yeah, and that's where most of these guys were.
	I mean, I think there may have been one or two that would be willing to say it was sort of random.
	In other words, when you take that position that you just articulated, that God started the process, that involves a deliberate decision.
	You're speaking of God as a person.
	You're not making intelligent decisions and whatnot.
	And that's the common view for people who are in the sciences who happen to be Christians who accept evolution.
	There might have been one or two of these people that I knew that would have taken a step back even from that and made it a little more random, closer to what you would think of as a secular Darwin position.
	They were somewhere in between there.
	But I agree with you.
	I think that that idea, and then that the sub-question is, tell me why God couldn't make that decision.
	You know, on what basis would you say that God is limited and kept from making that decision?
	And to me, that just kills the conversation.
	But, you know, again, that's me.
	So I'm not troubled by the idea that if there is this thing, this force of nature, and in God's hand, you know, some providential thing, that we call evolution, you know, maybe life evolved somewhere else.
	And then the discussion changes to, well, you know, would God have a purpose in that?
	What would the point be?
	What's the relationship between that and us?
	You know, you get in a whole, a number of layers of other questions, but I don't think the discussion needs to stop with the first question, you know, about probability and evolution.
	Or we simply could have evolved from stardust.
	I mean, basically, stardust, mud puddles, lightning strikes, you name it, right?
	Yeah, I mean, that is an issue, because if I were to say that to one of my friends, you know, Professor So-and-so, he would say, whatever.
	But someone who's sort of been trained to think that, well, The reason Art Bell is suggesting that, or the reason someone is saying that, is because they want me to accept the idea that I'm an extraterrestrial, or extraterrestrials are our space brothers.
	In other words, because they've sort of been conditioned to respond a certain way, they unfortunately will.
	They won't really stop to think, well there's two or three or four or ten different ways to sort of look at this.
	They'll kind of gravitate to the one they really dislike.
	You know, and then, you know, it becomes a real thing to fight over.
	All right.
	So, with regard to extraterrestrials, you're not married to the idea?
	Nor are you that distant from it that you can't embrace the possibility?
	No, I, like I said, I love, I have this, again, this romantic spasm in me that, boy, wouldn't it be nice if Star Trek were real?
	You know, minus the Klingons and the Romulans, I guess.
	But, you know, that would be really interesting.
	It'd be fascinating.
	It's sort of on my short list of, boy, wouldn't I like to see this before I die?
	You know, that kind of thing.
	But on the other side, yeah, well, I have things like, let's clone a mammoth and all that kind of stuff.
	I mean, there are just some things I'd love to see them do.
	And again, this is on the list that I'd like to know.
	But on the other side, I don't think we really have evidence yet.
	You know, a lot of what people accept as evidence, I just don't think is really good evidence.
	And so I sort of suspend it and like hope, but because I hope One Direction doesn't mean I'm going to embrace what I think is a really bad argument.
	Or the people who would ask you to accept the evidence, Mike, or the, I should say, preponderance of the evidence.
	When you look back at all the UFO sightings, when you look, you know, all the stories, They claim it all adds up to, it's got to be true.
	Yeah, they do claim that, and that's the part I have difficulty with.
	I don't think it adds up to that at all.
	Ask yourself this question, why do we, with the whole UFO thing, why do we think about UFOs and think extraterrestrial?
	Well, in my case, Mike, I had a sighting, right?
	A very close sighting, a very convincing sighting.
	I could have thrown a rock at the damn thing.
	It floated over my head, or more likely defied gravity, and then I watched it float out across the valley with my wife at that time.
	And once you've seen something like that, then yes, you begin to ask questions like the ones you were just talking about.
	Right.
	Now, if I saw, and you're referring to the triangle, I remember you talking about that on the air at length.
	If I saw one of those, my first thought would be either, let's get in the house, or, boy, that's really cool.
	But I've read this sort of technology, especially the slow-moving ones, is really on the board in patents.
	I actually blog about this stuff with some frequency back in the twenties and thirties.
	In other words, you could have seen a dirigible or a dirigible married to nuclear power.
	It's harder to talk dirigible when they go real fast and make turns and all this sort of thing.
	What I'm getting to is you think extraterrestrial because it's an unfamiliar technology and it seems like the technology is something that You know, because we haven't experienced, the assumption is that it's not ours or that we couldn't do it.
	I've actually become more convinced that the technology is a dead end.
	Again, the Germans were making, you know, craft, triangular craft, in the 40s.
	They had passed, you know, all the tests.
	What do you mean?
	They had nuclear power, the whole thing.
	Mike, what do you mean it's a dead end?
	Explain that, please.
	I don't think it's the question to ask.
	In other words, I don't think it's the thing that will tilt the question one way or the other.
	To me, the tougher issue is biologicals.
	Okay, you know, the claims of bodies and whatnot.
	So for me, that's what I would have to have.
	I would have to have, let's say that, you know, we have these pictures or there's some other, you know, Real clear biological evidence.
	Okay, well that answers question one.
	Question two is actually a little different, and that involves visitations and then individual sightings, and then you sort of have to go from point one to these other points.
	But for me, the fundamental question of, you know, are there extraterrestrials, intelligent extraterrestrials out there?
	I would need a biological entity, because there's so much that you can, you know, look at and dig out and people have.
	I'm going to have to interrupt you there.
	life to tracing these exotic technologies, even in the majestic documents.
	There are majestic documents that actually have the elements in the quote-unquote power
	plant of the craft that you can find were used in technology during World War II to
	produce nuclear power without a reactor.
	I mean, they're all the same elements.
	Hold tight, please.
	We're going to do a break.
	And I do want to talk to you about the Majestic documents because I know that you had them tested and you got findings back on the Majestic documents.
	So, we'll talk to you about that.
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	Yeah!
	Mike Heiser is my guest!
	So stay right where you are, because it won't be quite a night, ladies and gentlemen.
	It's 2 a.m.
	It's 2 a.m.
	and the figure is gone.
	I don't know where it went.
	The sun is still warm.
	Because I still want you And I'm next to the fire in the baking chamber
	Yeah, the storm will lose the sirens in my head And the sirens are circling
	The storm is coming The storm is coming
	Somewhere in a royal cover of the sky I saw him realize how eternal fate is
	And turned his back on me It's 2 AM
	It's 2 AM It's 2 a.m.
	It's 2 a.m.
	and the beer is gone.
	It's 2 a.m.
	The gun's still warm.
	Yeah, there's a song on the loo, a song it reams in my head.
	Rhymes up in silence, all circuited to bed.
	Can I keep up?
	Run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, I gave you love, I thought that we had made it to the top I gave you all I have to give, why did it have to stop?
	From the area of 51, this is Dark Matter with Art Bell.
	To join the show, please call 1-855-REAL-UFO.
	That's 1-855-732-5836.
	Wow!
	That was really strange.
	I'm used to unusual occurrences on this program.
	But that was bizarre.
	It's just like everything was suddenly gone.
	No audio, nothing.
	Really, really weird.
	Well, I've had everything from satellites spinning out of control to magnetic blankets across my valley.
	It's just really, really strange.
	Anyway, back with Mike Heiser.
	Mike, uh, the majestic documents, um...
	You know, these were quoted almost biblically for years and years and years and years by so many people, and I guess you finally had a good, hard look and went out and got them tested.
	Can you describe how you did that and the results?
	Sure, and for listeners, if they go to my website, which is just drmsh.com, at the top there's a link that says Quick Links, and if they go to that page, They'll be able to download the study we did for free at one of the links there.
	I'll just sort of overview it.
	What we did, and I say we because I had known of someone named Dr. Carol Chasky who did this for a living.
	She is a computational linguist and she did her doctoral work at Brown University actually came up with her own program as part of her dissertation to test something called authorship attribution.
	And she has made a career, like in court cases, when someone needs to either verify or rule out that a document was written by the person that, say, signed that letter or claimed authorship to be able to test that.
	And so she has had a long career And her work has been featured in numerous court cases.
	If you look her up on the web, you know, she has a whole list of that.
	So when I found out about her, I thought, well, this is the ideal person to test some of these documents if she was interested.
	May I ask a quick question, Mike?
	And it is this.
	Can you rattle off briefly the criterion she used?
	In other words, how does she authenticate?
	What methods?
	What she focuses on would not be common vocabulary, but would be what we call in grammar, function words, little words like conjunctions, prepositions, interjections.
	In other words, the words that you don't really think about, but you just sort of habitually use in certain ways, that everybody sort of develops these unconscious patterns.
	And so she actually focuses on the uncommon, In terms of, you know, non-specialized vocabulary, but another way to look at it is they're the most common words that everybody uses.
	So, when you go through a document, again in Her Procedure, this is what you're looking for.
	The whole idea is to establish patterns.
	Now, it's only the methods we used only apply to documents in the Majestic Group.
	That had authorship attribution.
	In other words, a particular document that supposedly was sent by, you know, Roosevelt or, you know, Helen Cotter or somebody like that, General Twining.
	Right.
	So we had to pull those out.
	And then we needed documents that were more than one or two sentences, because some of these are just memos that, you know, just one sentence.
	And so we had to have at least a paragraph.
	So we winnowed that.
	And then We wanted to zero in on the documents, and this was really a funding issue because I was paying for this, which are the ones that have the most content that is the most explosive, you know, which are the ones that talk about extraterrestrial, you know, bodies or, you know, something that really, you know, has an important role to play potentially in the whole narrative.
	And so we got a hold of those.
	And so what you do then is you have your Your documents that you want to test the attribution.
	So what I had to do, and I enlisted the help of a couple people to find, okay, we're going to test two documents here that were written by General Twining.
	Well, let's go to archive websites, and we would try to find documents that nobody is going to dispute by this particular person.
	So we'd pull half a dozen of those, and we had to get them all typed out.
	We typed them as they were.
	We didn't correct anything if there were typos in there.
	And she basically takes all of that, and she's trying to establish, again, using the computer, patterns, again, isolating on the function words, within that person's consciousness.
	So even if they were dictated, as opposed to handwritten letters that were later transcribed, it's still reflecting the thought pattern of the person that produced the particular document.
	And so all of the knowns get fed in, and then patterns are established.
	And then the unknowns, it really, and what she did was kind of interesting.
	She took all of them, regardless of author attribution, in one round of tests, and sort of put those against all of the knowns by all the different people.
	There were 17 total documents, eight or nine different authors.
	And I asked her, well, why would you do that round of testing?
	And she said, If some of these documents, regardless of who the authorship is attributed to, if they start matching each other, regardless of the name, that's going to tell us that there may have been a common hand in producing them.
	I've got it right.
	Let me just pause for one second, and that's fascinating.
	What is her record?
	In other words, this sort of a test must have some sort of percentage of success associated with it historically, right?
	Well, there's going to be, in the results that are produced, you're going to have this, if you look at the actual document, the actual article on the website, I have the Excel tables reproduced in that document.
	It's a PDF.
	And there's going to be a number, I hate to use the word percentage, but I'm not a math person, so I'll use it.
	There's a percentile number that is produced by the databases, the procedures that she uses.
	And she will then, she actually would tell me, because I can't decipher this, she told me what the numbers meant as far as, okay, this one You know, fits in with the patterning of the knowns, and so I would colorize them in the document for the reader.
	This one doesn't.
	This one does.
	And then she actually went through every line of the spreadsheet, and she said she would highlight which ones that appeared to her eye.
	Okay, Mike, I'm sorry to interrupt.
	I know you're having a hard time hearing me when I start to talk, but this is really important to me to understand what her record is.
	In other words, what her, in past judgments, of the same sort.
	if she write eighty percent of the time seventy percent of the time fifty
	percent of the time ninety nine point nine that what what kind of
	you know hit record as she have i I'm trying to understand what kind of science we've got here.
	Yeah, she's going to be well into the 90s because her work is regularly tested in court, like under oath and things like that.
	So anyone who's interested in her, again, could go to her website.
	She describes different court cases that she's No, it's just fine.
	If it's in the 90s, that's fine.
	I just wanted to understand the science that we were hearing about.
	So, you know, I think genetics is like in the billions, right?
	Only one chance in five billion, that's not your child.
	So, 90% or better.
	90% or better.
	Right.
	Right. So what the end result was of the 17 documents that were tested,
	Again, it's a limited pool and only the ones that have an authorship attribution.
	Only one of them, she was able to look at and say, this one is legit.
	And that was the General Twining memo to General George Shulgin.
	It's a 1947 document.
	The other ones did not align with the knowns by the same author.
	And so she said, in a court case, this would just get thrown out.
	You know, we could not draw any conclusions.
	We could not say anything factual about this document.
	We couldn't base anything factual on this particular document.
	So one passed the test.
	The most interesting thing to me was that eight of them had authorial affinities with documents in the pool that were supposedly authored by somebody else.
	And she said, look, It doesn't prove that the documents were produced by a common hand, but it does suggest that she was real picky about her terminology there.
	I reproduced her terminology in the documents.
	She would say it doesn't prove that they were all manufactured by the same hand.
	Quick question, Mike.
	The Twining document, the one that she authenticated, could you give all of us an idea of what Was the essence of the Twining?
	It would probably be looked at as neutral by UFO enthusiasts.
	There's nothing, there's no extraterrestrial speculation in that one.
	It's the one where Twining says that, you know, within his phrases, within present US knowledge, You know, we could reproduce these kind of craft that he was talking about.
	If any of your listeners are going to look at the document, it's point F in the document where that language comes from.
	He talks about, you know, speeds at 7,000 miles an hour that are subsonic and, you know, Twining's assessment in that particular document is that we're not thinking extraterrestrial here.
	Now, obviously there are other documents within the majestic, you know, cache That we couldn't test because they have no authorship attribution.
	So the study itself was limited.
	But I should mention this one other thing to give Stan Friedman some kudos here.
	I deliberately also chose, again, when there was an author, documents that Friedman and others had, by other means, forensically shown that were fakes.
	And her study flagged those same documents.
	They did not pass the test.
	Only one did.
	So, I didn't tell her about that either.
	I sort of used that for my own sake, because I don't understand the science.
	I'm depending on her.
	To me, there would have been something wrong if one of those came up good when I knew they weren't.
	And so, it actually validated some of the work that Stan had done on some of these other documents.
	Now, I know he's very committed to the extraterrestrial view of the documents.
	It doesn't prove or disprove that.
	It does show, though, that there's a lot in this that really looks suspicious.
	And that shouldn't be earth-shattering either, because anybody who knows about the history of how we got the majestic documents, it's a very shady history.
	For your listeners, again, I think one of the best things they can read on this is the 2007 MUFON Symposium document.
	That was an update on Majestic Research.
	I have a link to that on my Quick Links site, but I'm kind of sour on the Majestic documents.
	I know that there's a lot that's post-1989, which is a year that matters for this discussion that could very well be genuine, and some of the older ones might be, but it's got such a checkered history that I don't feel like I can trust them for a whole lot.
	Okay, so other than the Twining document, the others showed basically attributes that would say, look here, the same person wrote all of these, except this one.
	Yeah, for instance, you'd be looking at a Hill & Cotter document that matched the profile of a JFK document.
	That just shouldn't happen.
	No.
	No.
	Because they're different people.
	And she just flagged, again, 8 of the 17, just sort of stuck out like sore thumbs to her that she just thought, there's just something not right here.
	And she flagged those right off the bat.
	The other ones didn't pass the test for other reasons, but those eight, she said, there's eight in here that just look suspicious.
	My next question for you, Mike, would be the UFO community.
	In other words, when you came out with these findings, how did the UFO community react to it?
	Was there a lot of anger?
	Were people lashing out at you, or what happened?
	Well, it was mixed, as you might expect.
	I unveiled this at a conference in Roswell, and Rich Dolan and I talked afterwards.
	And Rich was really enthusiastic about it.
	I mean, he more or less said, this is the kind of thing that we need to be doing.
	And, you know, I expect that from Rich.
	I think Rich is a serious researcher and have a high regard for his commitment to doing real research.
	My biggest disappointment was actually Stan Friedman because he didn't want to really hear anything about it.
	I think he somehow got my novel, which has a lot of religious angle to it and the whole UFO question, confused with this report because he just sort of went off on it and I was a religious fundamentalist or something like that.
	It's like, Stan, it validates This other work you did.
	I think you might want to actually read the document, you know, and not get it confused with the novel.
	So it was mixed, you know, but that wasn't a surprise, and that's okay.
	Is it unfair, Mike, to suggest, as Stanton seemed to, that your religious background influenced you in some way?
	I mean, I think it's a fair question.
	It would be if I had written any of the documents, and if I was the computational linguist that had it tested, and I was the computational linguist that produced the program that had it tested.
	I'm none of those things.
	I was just the guy that said, hey, here's somebody who does this for a living.
	Would she be interested in testing these documents?
	And she was.
	So it didn't really go anywhere as far as a huge impact, because You know, to be honest with you, people are sort of committed to what side of this question they're on.
	Most people, you know, are more interested in looking at evidence that kind of, you know, leans the way they hope it leans.
	I just wanted to know because I'm a language guy, and we do this kind of work, you know, in the office with not forensic, you know, authorship attribution, but we do lots of stuff with software.
	That applies to languages.
	So this just seemed an area that I could actually contribute something, you know, into ufology.
	So we did it!
	Okay, well, it certainly wouldn't surprise you, Mike, would it, that a lot of people would perhaps accept Stanton's notion that you are committed to a particular point of view, and this fits that point of view.
	And I'm not suggesting that there's anything wrong with the findings or the testing or anything else, but I can see why people, you know, might say you're married with a certain point of view as well.
	Well, I don't really care one way or the other.
	I mean, if there are aliens out there, then great.
	I just like to know, and I'd like there to be real evidence.
	I don't want cloak and dagger anecdotes.
	I don't want accusations going from this ufologist back to that ufologist where I have to pick which one I like.
	That is not data.
	And if that irritates people, well, You know, I'm not responsible for that.
	Okay.
	Alright.
	No, that's entirely fair.
	You've also debunked...
	The ancient astronaut idea, right?
	I mean, what about the long runways down south and all of that?
	All the rocks that have been decorated seeming to show aliens with space helmets and all of it, Mike.
	In what way do you feel, in other words, do you have something, I don't know, equivalent to what you did with the majestic documents when it comes to ancient alien theory?
	In my mind, I distinguish everything we've talked about up to this point.
	You know, the question of, are there extraterrestrials?
	Are these documents real or not?
	So on and so forth.
	I distinguish all of that.
	To me, that's serious ufology.
	The ancient alien stuff, I don't take seriously at all, because I do know ancient texts and I do know ancient history.
	I know where to get the information in archaeology and anthropology and all this stuff.
	And That part, and I know they get lumped together and I understand why they get lumped together, but I treat one seriously and I treat the other not seriously because frankly the work is extraordinarily poor and in many cases just literally made up and I don't think it really deserves the amount of attention that the other part of ufology gets.
	Well, there is some Hard evidence in forms of pictograms, in the form of what appear to be runways, that kind of thing.
	How do you handle that?
	So we have a pictogram from a foreign culture.
	We have no text that tells us what it is.
	Very true.
	So what we have, and this is just a blunt reality, okay?
	This is realville here.
	We have a picture that I'm going to use my 21st century mind, part of which is influenced by this narrative.
	And now I'm going to interpret that picture.
	I could be miles and miles and miles and miles and miles away from anything accurate.
	And in most cases, people have been able to produce Uh, the same picture in other provenance objects where it's clear as to what the purpose of this thing was, or, you know, what, you know, there might be a text that goes with it.
	You know, that's when you really get lucky when there's actually text, textual material that goes with it.
	And enough bad work has been demonstrated in that area.
	And it's inherently subjective.
	Again, To me, it's the badness of the work that's out there that, I will admit, colors my opinion of the enterprise, of the whole thing.
	I'll give you an example.
	You have these, quote-unquote, reptilian figurines that are circulating on the web, and people are referring to them as Anunnaki figurines.
	Well, guess what?
	Yeah, they come from Iraq, but they come from a civilization that predated the writing, predated writing period.
	They predate the Sumerian text, and they don't have any text on them.
	Why?
	Because writing hadn't been invented yet.
	There is nothing about the object that tells you anything about it, that identifies it in any way.
	But people will take it and just run with it.
	All right.
	Hold it right there for a second, Mike.
	We're going to take a break, and we're going to be right back.
	Fascinating stuff.
	So we'll get to the The pictures on the rocks, the runways, ancient astronauts, how it all just isn't right.
	I don't think he agrees with Zachariah.
	From the area of 51, this is Dark Matter with Art Bell.
	To join the show, please call 1-855-REAL-UFO.
	That's 1-855-732-5836.
	And we'll get back to Mike Heiser in just one second.
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	All right, Mike, welcome back.
	I guess you're not married to much of the Anunnaki stuff, right?
	Well, as far as ancient aliens goes, no.
	The Anunnaki, of course, show up in Sumerian, cuneiform texts.
	I mean, they're a little over a hundred times.
	You know, I should say something.
	I don't know whether to encourage people to go see this or not.
	One of the things I did on my website devoted to Zacharias Sitchin and ancient astronaut stuff was, I figured, well, I don't want people to just take my word for it.
	When I say insane things like, look, the fundamental ideas of what Zacharias Sitchin is saying, that the Anunnaki come from Nibiru, That they were here to mine gold, that Nibiru is this planet beyond Saturn, and really the fundamental tenets of the system.
	Rather than take my word for it, what I did was I created a screen capture video of me going to a website called the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.
	And I know it doesn't sound exciting to talk about things that do not translate well to the radio, or really anything for that matter.
	I put in a search for the term Anunnaki, and the video is me putting the search term in, clicking the button, getting all of the occurrences of the term Anunnaki, where they occur in the tablets, Getting them back in the search.
	Showing people, now look, if you hit PR here, that takes you to an English translation.
	There are 117 or so of these.
	This is on my website.
	The Sitchin website.
	And you did this, why?
	So that people could watch it and do it themselves.
	Because I don't like arguments from authority.
	Yeah, here's Mike with a PhD in ancient Semitic languages and all this stuff.
	Big deal.
	Okay, you should not have to depend on what Mike says about this.
	Go to the site, run the search, click the translation, and you will see that I'm correct here.
	Okay, none of these ideas about the Anunnaki that Sitchin really depends on to roll out his extraterrestrial narrative, the texts don't say anything about the Anunnaki in regard to these items at all.
	It literally doesn't even exist.
	It's not a question of, well, Mike would translate it this way, but someone else would translate it that way.
	I'm saying the material doesn't even exist.
	Now, if I made a crazy claim like that without knowing that it was real, I mean, I'd have to have my head examined, okay?
	But I got so tired of trying to explain to people this is not a translation issue, at least in regard to the Anunnaki.
	Are you suggesting by implication that Zechariah needs his head examined?
	No, the late Zechariah Sitchin did not need his head examined.
	What I think, and I've heard people say really nasty things about Sitchin that I just think are nutty.
	I do not think Zechariah Sitchin is a reptilian.
	I do not think he was an Illuminati agent.
	No, but you said everything pretty much that he thought was wrong.
	I think his narrative, his explanation of the Sumerian text is completely wrong.
	What I think he actually did is he reads the text in translation, using Kramer or some other known translation at the time, and I think he essentially created What you could loosely call an allegory.
	I think he tried to marry what he was reading with the characters in the mythologies, and then he would get into cosmological text.
	And he married that somewhat to Velikovsky, you know, the whole worlds in collision thing.
	Right.
	Well, I interviewed him, Mike.
	I interviewed him many times, and he, believe me, was very, very married to it.
	There's no question about it.
	Oh, I know.
	He was absolutely committed to it.
	Like an article of faith.
	Yep, yep.
	And I'm just saying, look, there's just nothing here.
	I mean, it's not the same in other issues, you know, where you do, you know, there are issues of, this is a good translation, that's a bad translation, you know.
	It's not anything you could put in one category, but as far as the... I should mention this, too.
	One of the other things I did besides creating that exciting video for people was I looked up All of the scholarly academic articles on the Annunaki I could find.
	There were three of them.
	Unfortunately, they were all in German.
	There's nothing more recent than the mid-20th century, and I hired someone, a specialist in German, to translate the documents.
	People can get those translations as they are.
	It's a lot of pages because they're 50, 60 pages, but you can actually have the best research on the Annunaki Sumerian Assyrian scholars.
	And I try to do this because I don't want people depending on Mike.
	I don't like arguments from authority.
	I like to direct people back to primary texts and say, go just go read them.
	Don't take somebody's opinion.
	Just go read the things and you'll see.
	All right.
	Here's Linda who sends me a message, Art.
	He does not believe the scientists who carbon date things.
	If you come up with a test done by other scientists, he will tell you that they did it wrong or made mistakes.
	Unfair?
	Yeah.
	What's wrong with carbon dating?
	I don't know.
	Linda apparently heard you reference something.
	It was carbonated.
	I got one of these today.
	Let's use this.
	Here's a good teaching point here.
	This is what Mike will do.
	I got an email from somebody that sent me a picture of an object and says, what do you think of this object that I discovered?
	And you know, it starts telling me what it is.
	Okay.
	And that's ancient alien stuff.
	My first question is always, okay, I need to know where it was provenanced.
	In other words, where was it discovered?
	I need to know that it was not a disturbed site.
	Can you direct me to the publication, to the archaeological publication?
	I have access to lots of databases as a faculty member.
	I can get to a lot of things that other people can't.
	Can you give me the archaeologist's name?
	I'll find it if you give me the information, and I'll go read it, and maybe I'll post it on a blog if you like.
	I'll ask them.
	99% of the time, I don't get anything back.
	What I want I want real data.
	If you give me a carbon date for something, my first question will be, who dated it?
	Show me the report.
	All this stuff gets published.
	This is not secrecy.
	There are millions and millions and millions of pages put out in the social sciences, archaeology, anthropology, every blasted year.
	I can get that stuff.
	I want to go read it so that I know No, it's not unreasonable.
	start, you know, what, who did this, you know, who discovered it. I'll email those
	people and say, hey, Professor So-and-so, I read your article on this and that, and
	I have a question. I'll do stuff like that. I don't think that's unreasonable.
	I really don't. No, it's not unreasonable, but again, when people look at you, they...
	Well, perhaps a little.
	I call myself the equal opportunity offender, because I'll do this with Christians that email me too, about some point of, well, you know, you're a heretic out there because you don't believe in the global flood, or you don't believe in this, or you don't believe in that.
	You know, and whether I do or not, most of the time they're just repeating something they heard.
	I'm going to ask them for the same thing because, look, even if I like your position, a bad argument in defense of a good position is still a crappy argument.
	That's what it is.
	so when you rather have a good argument for what you believe as opposed to a bad one
	people describe it as a welcome york it was trying to smoke of the world has been around for a very very long time
	I don't know if you saw the series on TV about after man or after man.
	It showed how quickly society, the buildings, the things that we see every day would be dust and gone.
	And the answer is pretty quickly.
	Is it really beyond reason to suggest that there could have been others here from elsewhere or there could have been civilizations prior to the one we're so proud of right now?
	Well, that's an argument that could actually be used, you know, both ways to argue that point and also to argue against that point.
	You know, and the other problem is it's an argument from silence.
	While I don't see this I don't see a whole lot of buildings in this place, but boy, the Earth's been around here so long, so they must have been here.
	Well, that's kind of really not a sound argument.
	I mean, in theory, we have evidence of writing, which is a mark of a high civilization.
	People don't stop to think about how important writing is, but you need You know, to preserve thoughts for the next generation on practical things, how to build things, how to make things, so on and so forth.
	So I would expect, you know, if there were like these long ago civilizations like, let's say, Blavatsky talks about, you know, millions and millions and millions of years, well, it's really convenient to attach that number to it because then you think that that exempts you from having any evidence.
	Well, It really doesn't, because if you're going to make the claim, I need to know that the claim is reasonable.
	And I don't think that is an unreasonable thing to ask for.
	I can sit here and say, well, it's possible.
	Sure, Art, it's possible.
	Sure, whatever the questioner's name was, that's possible.
	It's possible maybe in the sense that I could be the next American Idol.
	Okay, that's possible, too.
	I could wake up tomorrow with a bump on the head, and I wake up and I have a great voice, I audition for the show, and I win the American Idol.
	Yeah, that's possible.
	Really?
	Well, not based on what I've heard so far tonight.
	I mean, it's a great conversation, but you're not singing, you're not doing anything all that entertaining.
	I mean, you see where the conversation goes.
	So, on the one hand, I don't have any problem saying, well, you know, that could be, but I'm not going to base what I think or believe on a could be.
	I think it's more reasonable to just ask, is there one thing that, you know, makes this a little more concrete, that takes it out of the realm of complete speculation?
	In the realm of, hey, look at this thing we have here.
	We need to think about this object or this text.
	I just don't think it's unreasonable.
	And I know it irritates people.
	It irritates my wife when I'm like that, too.
	Would you apply the same standards of proof, Mike, to the concept of intelligent design?
	Yeah, I've said for a long time that I think intelligent design Really doesn't.
	It doesn't prove anything.
	If I could be really blunt about it.
	I mean, intelligent design is not really a theory about who the designer or designers are.
	I've said for many years that, look, you can take all the arguments for intelligent design and put an S on the end.
	And you can make the same arguments.
	And again, a Christian audience, that just irritates the heck out of them.
	Because they're going to assume that the designer must be the God of the Bible.
	And it's like, well, sure, I want to think that too.
	But if we're actually looking at the argument, intelligent design, all it says, all it argues for is that the best explanation for some natural phenomena is some sort of intelligent cause.
	It's a reasoning by analogy.
	Here's a thing that looks like it has intricate design.
	Therefore, it probably maybe had a designer.
	Okay, that's wonderful if you can test it.
	But ultimately, at the end of the day, even if you're right, you still don't know who the designer is.
	Okay.
	And so it's extremely limited.
	I don't think I don't want to say it's not useful, because I think it is.
	I don't want to see God divorced from the conversation about creation and things like that.
	But the other side of it is it's quite limited.
	It's more limited than the average person who gets excited about it, really thinks about it.
	Do you believe in intelligent design?
	One way or the other, whether you say God did it, or it was a natural process, with somebody's hand in it, or an extraterrestrial hand, or whatever, do you believe in intelligent design?
	Or is it all random?
	I do believe that there is a creator.
	Creator, a creator, right, okay. And what I mean by that is I see a
	philosophical necessity to have a distinction between creation and the
	causation, you know, some causation, whether that's an impersonal thing like
	like Big Bang or whatever, you know, that's a, you're at a different level of
	questioning there.
	I don't see all as one.
	I'm not a monist.
	I would be a dualist, that there's a distinction between creation and then its causation.
	And so because I hold that position, yeah, I think that there are some things that do speak to intelligent design.
	But in terms of an honest philosophical argument, winning that particular argument does not link that argument to a specific creator.
	And that's just being honest, you know, with the philosophical argument.
	And most intelligent design theorists themselves will tell you that.
	I mean, when this kind of stuff filters down into the lay community and in the Internet, then it starts to become more of a religious argument.
	So you believe, you do believe, to boil it down, in intelligent design, that there was a creator.
	Is that creator the one of the Bible?
	I think that any creator would have to be a creator like is described in the Bible, and that is totally distinct from creation, and again, characteristics of omnipotence and that sort of thing.
	I don't believe, however, That creation had to be perfect.
	In fact, I actually think, and this gets me in trouble again with the Christian camp, I don't think that the Bible describes a perfect creation.
	That opens all kinds of, you know, worms for that audience.
	But when you start to say things like, well, the Creator would have done this or that, or would not have done this or that, and evolutionists who want to be materialists, you know, who are atheistic, they say these things all the time.
	You can't have intelligent design because God wouldn't have done this, would he?
	Well, you're making a theological argument.
	I hope you realize that, Mr. Scientist.
	That's a theological argument.
	You're telling me what the deity that you don't believe in would or would not have done.
	That's not a science-based argument.
	That is a theological argument.
	So, again, just to get that off the table, I don't believe that imperfection argues against intelligent design.
	Let's just put it that way.
	Okay.
	Do you think that the process of evolution is ongoing, as in still?
	Yeah, I don't see... if we accept the idea of evolution, I don't think that there would be any way to coherently demonstrate that it's all stopped.
	I don't know how you'd demonstrate that.
	I don't see any reason to conclude that.
	Where do you think we're going, Mike, with quantum physics?
	It is a real mystery.
	Spooky action at a distance, or whatever it was that Einstein said about it.
	It is pretty weird stuff to try and wrap your mind around.
	What do you think?
	I'm fascinated.
	I'm not a physicist.
	I don't have the mechanical mind to really grasp a lot of this stuff.
	But I think that stuff is just fascinating.
	I also think it's the friend of theology.
	And again, this is going to get me in trouble with that part of your audience, but whatever.
	Think of it this way.
	Most Christians, many Christians, whether they could tell you where the idea comes from, are really disturbed by the idea that You know, God doesn't have everything predestined.
	If I walk into a room full of Christians to speak on something, I say, hey, look, I don't believe that everything is nailed down.
	I don't believe that foreknowledge, God's foreknowledge, necessitates his predestining of all things.
	That freaks people out, okay?
	But that's exactly what quantum physics has demonstrated.
	There's this certain random quality to it.
	And I can show you passages in the New Testament that talk about how creation mirrors the character of the Creator.
	I can take you to passages that very clearly show that God foreknows things that do not come to pass, and that tells you immediately, point blank, that God knew something that didn't come to pass, therefore that thing was not predestinated.
	But I hate to say it this way, a lot of Christians are not very familiar with their Bible.
	They, they aren't aware of a lot of these things in it.
	Again, the academics, you know, this stuff gets thrown around all the time.
	But when you when you try to, you know, do stuff on the internet, when you try to do stuff on the radio, you try to get people interested in the discussion.
	People don't like it.
	I don't know how else to put it.
	Wouldn't it be interesting to actually give the Bible to that same lady who looked at the majestic documents?
	You know, we have actually talked to her about that.
	This is an interesting rabbit trail.
	Her undergraduate degree, Carol's undergraduate degree, was in Greek.
	I'll just describe what we have asked her in the past.
	There are certain books of the New Testament that are what are called disputed authorship books.
	The past early epistles, for instance, that would be 1st and 2nd Timothy and Titus, are sort of notorious in the academic realm for scholars fighting about, did Paul really write this or not?
	So we've asked her, you know, hey, are you interested in this?
	Because we can give you, you know, the digital form of the Greek New Testament and, you know, check out authorship attribution.
	And, of course, she brings up the obvious problem.
	Well, you'd have to also hand me documents to create a profile that you know for certain were written by this particular individual.
	And she, and, you know, frankly, we, you know, We wonder, could we do that?
	Because most of Paul's letters, we'll just use Paul for an example, most of Paul's letters are disputed in some way at some point in the letters, even the ones that are sort of, you know, everybody accepts as genuinely Pauline.
	So, is there a way we could actually construct this test?
	There have been whole books on something called stylometry, trying to test this.
	Now, Carol's methods are a little different.
	And there are computational linguists in our field who are applying this to certain, you know, books, usually in the New Testament, because it's shorter, it takes less work to produce the raw data.
	And the results are mixed, but you know, she'd have her own unique approach.
	So that might happen, we might be able to You know, convince her to do this, and it would have to be, you know, worthwhile.
	We'd want to get something publishable out of it.
	But there are scholars who do that.
	You wouldn't be afraid of that?
	Oh, no.
	I think it'd be very interesting.
	Again, my view of inspiration—this is a theological term that Christians throw around a lot, and conservative Jews throw it around, too—is that Scripture comes from God.
	Well, I believe that.
	I think that God If I embrace the idea of a creator, the idea that a deity could influence somebody to write something seems like a pretty short jump.
	I mean, I can do that.
	I can influence somebody to write something down for posterity, big deal.
	So, I don't view inspiration as this paranormal event, like the prophet wakes up and starts making breakfast, and then God zaps him, and his mind leaves his body, and then he wakes up an hour later and looks down at a text and says, Boy, wow, look at that!
	Didn't I do a great job of that?
	That isn't the way it's described, even in the Bible.
	It's a very human process, where specific literary genres are used, specific forms of literature, like an Old Testament passage about a treaty.
	Well, guess what?
	It'll conform to treaty patterns in the ancient Near East.
	Law codes will conform.
	Writers would do this because if they didn't do it, you'd think they were hacks.
	You'd think they wouldn't know what they're doing.
	Like, doesn't this guy know how to write a treaty?
	I mean, what a bonehead, okay?
	The writers were people, and they used the tools, the knowledge, the vocabulary at their time to produce what, you know, I would say what God wanted them ultimately to do.
	I have a very providential view of inspiration that's very human, but doesn't... God plays the ultimate role, preparing them in their lives for that moment to produce that thing.
	All right.
	Hold tight right there.
	Mike Heiser is my guest, and my guess is that you have questions for him, and we'll be getting to that.
	Feel free to challenge away.
	That's what it's all about.
	It's interesting, isn't it?
	what he does not believe in and what he does.
	I am a Christian.
	On a morning from a bogus movie In a country where they turn back time You're there strolling through the crowd like People are contemplating a crime She comes out of the sun in a silk dress Running like a watercolour in the rain To be part of Dark Matter this night, please direct your finger digits to dial 1-855-REAL-UFO.
	That's 1-855-732-5836.
	Well, okay.
	Mike Heiser is my guest.
	And, um, gee, I've got a good question.
	It involves Adam and Eve.
	Mike, I wonder, uh...
	If you think the whole idea, the whole story of the original Adam and Eve is even possible, I mean, there are genetic arguments, I guess, against it?
	Is that true?
	Yeah, there are certainly genetic arguments against it.
	I've actually followed this one for the last two or three years pretty closely.
	It's quite controversial, even within Christian circles, because you have Christian geneticists on both sides of this one.
	Here in my neck of the woods, there is the guy who more or less started the whole thing, Dennis Venema of the Trinity Western, produced an article that really argued against the historical Adam and Eve because of statistics that you can't account for populations as we know them.
	But it's coming from a single pair.
	And that's been batted around quite a bit.
	Some people, and I think about this, some people would say, well, we don't really need to care about a single pair because if we go back to a literal reading of Genesis after the flood, we have more than one pair.
	We have four Noah and his sons.
	And so then the argument proceeds from there.
	My view is I don't think that theologically Uh, we have to affirm a historical atom, although I'm not convinced that we shouldn't affirm that.
	In other words, I think the genetics is still divided on the issue.
	So I think, you know, 5, 10, 20 years, you know, we may, you know, statistical genetics might be an area that really gets a lot of attention.
	More work's put into it.
	We might have something more conclusive than it is now, but There are good arguments.
	You sound pretty unsure.
	I don't know where to come down.
	I have noticed that arguments that could go either way, like somebody who is a little married to what he believes, you have them fall down in your direction.
	I don't know means I don't know.
	For your readers or your listeners, I think one of the better books on this is by a guy named Peter Enns.
	It's about the historical Adam, the evolution of Adam, it's called.
	And Enns is an Old Testament scholar like I am.
	I know Pete.
	He got into trouble for a neutral position on this, or actually one that favored the evolutionary argument.
	But his argument is actually text-based, and that is he marshals a lot of evidence Depending on the dissertation that somebody else wrote, in part, that the story of Adam is actually a deliberate parallel to the story of Israel.
	And if that's the case, then the whole point of the story of Adam might be Again, something literary, talking about the nation, using the story to parallel the history of the nation.
	You mean metaphorical?
	I think he does a good job of laying it out for the non-specialist.
	It's controversial.
	I like parts of what his argument says.
	I don't like other parts of it.
	But I think, in this case, I don't think genetics lies, obviously.
	I do think, though, that—and the people who are in the field will tell you this in the articles they produce—that statistical genetics is still somewhat new, because the genome isn't that recent.
	You know, there's still—it's a burgeoning field.
	So I think for this one, it's like 10, 20 years down the road we may have something more conclusive.
	But either way, in terms of biblical scholarship or theology, I think this is something that can go either way.
	And I know that would upset a lot of people.
	For different reasons, but again, for those of you who are Christians out there listening, I can say this because I do not take Romans 5 the same way most of you do.
	So we'll just leave it there, I guess.
	So when you get to the genetics, you would think the percentages would be way below what the MJ-12 document reader was able to achieve?
	You know, I don't know that I'm qualified to comment on a comparison because I don't really know either field.
	But, you know, genetics doesn't lie.
	I mean, we depend on genetics for a lot of different things, you know, in terms of medicine, agriculture, all sorts of things.
	I mean, genetics is genetics.
	I mean, it's real.
	The data are real.
	The issue is the statistical analysis of the data.
	So who knows?
	I mean, Carol might be able to look at it and say, well, this is Like what I do or not like what I do.
	I'm just not qualified to say, you know, make that comparison.
	Okay.
	Well, I was just interested in the weight that you put on one versus the other.
	If people want to go, if you're interested in this question for your listeners, again, if you go to my website, drmsh.com, up at the top, one of my blogs, it's called The Naked Bible, You click on that, and you can go to that site, and on that site, there is a tab that talks about anthropology.
	Okay?
	Biblical anthropology, which includes the Adam question.
	And there's one on Romans 5.
	Again, it's a key passage in this.
	I've blogged a lot on this, because I'm interested in genetics.
	I think it's kind of fascinating.
	Again, even though I can't digest a lot of it, I'm really fascinated by it.
	Well, if genetics comes along and begins to say things that are, I don't know, in direct contrast to what you believe, and I know you do have faith, Mike, and some of what you say has got to be influenced by that faith to be in an uneven world if it was not so.
	So would you admit that that is to some degree true?
	Well, here's my secret, Art.
	Your listeners can get the alert here.
	I don't believe at all that Genesis, and the Bible for that matter, was written, was inspired to teach us science.
	We talk a lot about the need to interpret the Bible in context.
	Again, you think it was metaphorical.
	No, I think that the context for the Bible is the context that produced it.
	In other words, it's not the Reformation, it's not the early Church, it's not the Catholic Church, it's not this creed or that creed.
	The context that produced the Bible is the one that was around when the biblical writers were living and writing.
	And as a scholar, and as a close reader of the text in the original languages, what you have in Genesis is really, really close, very similar, because of the common worldview, to other ancient Near Eastern cosmologies.
	You know, they're not trying to teach us science.
	They're trying to teach us theological messaging.
	That we have a Creator.
	Here's who the Creator is.
	It's Yahweh, the God of Israel.
	Humanity's here because He wants them here.
	We are His imagers.
	We're His representatives.
	That should work its way out into our lives in certain ways.
	They're not scientists.
	They live in a pre-scientific world, so the messaging isn't about science.
	Now, I don't think the theological messaging contradicts science, though.
	I am a theist.
	I am someone who believes in a Creator.
	And I can stack PhDs all night long of people in the hard sciences I personally know who would stand with me in belief in a Creator.
	I don't think it overturns that apple cart at all.
	Now, what's problematic about that with a lot of hearers, you know, people that would hear me, is that they're used to having their Bible filtered to them through a creed or a tradition.
	I'm not antagonistic to creeds and traditions, I'm more apathetic toward them.
	And I'll grant you, I can say that because I've had the training, I know all the languages and all that stuff.
	I have to be honest with people and say, look, this is the way I look at things.
	I take the Bible for what it is.
	I do believe there's a God.
	I believe in a Creator.
	I believe that God is behind this thing we call the Bible.
	But we have to put it in its own context and ask ourselves what I think are reasonable questions.
	Why would God choose this time and place to do this?
	What's the point of it?
	What is He trying to message to us, and what is peripheral?
	Things like this.
	You know, as a scholar, I'm very mainstream in that, but when it comes to people who don't work in the field, some things I say can bother them.
	And I understand why that is, but I just don't filter it.
	A lot of my guests bother people.
	For example, I had a fellow on named Matthew Alper recently.
	Matthew wrote a book called The God Part of the Brain.
	Have you ever heard of that?
	Yeah, and I've heard, you know, not the most recent show, but I've heard previous shows.
	Okay, good, good, good.
	Alright, so basically he's saying that, look, human beings have an innate fear of their own mortality, and the brain has adapted over time to embrace the concept of a creator in order to assuage that fear of mortality.
	And it is a reasonable thing to imagine.
	I wonder how you address something like that.
	Well, your audience will understand when I say this, and I'll try to unpack it.
	If I had to put my money on Matthew Alper or Dean Radin, my money is on Dean.
	In other words, Alper's position depends on philosophical materialism.
	That all that is real is somehow biologically based or material based.
	I don't believe that.
	Lots of people don't believe it who have nothing theological invested in it.
	And lots of neuroscientists don't believe it.
	The real question comes down to, is all this stuff something the brain produces or something the brain receives or mediates or filters?
	You know, you have the radio and you have radio waves.
	Okay, you know, one of Alper's things is, well, if you took this gene out or you took this drug, it would sort of shut the thing off.
	Well, if I took the battery out of a radio that I've been listening to, I cannot conclude that the radio waves are not still there.
	Well, one of the things he did say, I want you to address this, is that, look, if you take somebody who is very religious and they have an accident, they hit their head, Many times they're suddenly not religious anymore.
	Exactly what I would expect.
	That phenomenon works just fine with the idea that the brain is a receiver or filter of consciousness.
	You do not need to have the idea that the brain produces consciousness or is consciousness to explain that.
	Both paradigms can explain that very same thing.
	I think On one hand, what Alper's saying is, I think, more intelligent than weird stuff like the God Helmet guy, you know, which I think is just ridiculous.
	So I'm going to give Alper credit for coming up with a more thoughtful idea.
	It's not unique with him.
	I mean, if anybody who's studied, and this is something else I'm interested in, the whole problem, quote-unquote, of consciousness gets into the mind-body problem, the mind-body issue.
	And neuroscientists are divided on this issue.
	I mean, I would want to know things like, well, why doesn't everyone believe in God then?
	Why do some people who believe in God later embrace atheism?
	Well, the numbers are pretty high.
	Why are conceptions of God so different?
	Right.
	Let me repeat.
	The percentages are very, very high.
	I mean, even if you go to Islands.
	Percentages for which?
	Those who believe either in God or a God.
	Those who worship.
	It's almost universal.
	You can go to islands that have been barely touched.
	Oh, I would expect that.
	Okay.
	Well, I mean, again, if we're going to... Well, let's just throw the Bible in here again.
	Romans 1, Ecclesiastes.
	Teach the idea that since we are made by God, we are designed We have this innate sense, innate urge, again, and if we don't have that relationship, we have this gap or this empty space in us.
	So, again, it's a very first century or more ancient way of saying just what you said.
	I mean, we would expect that if we are made in God's image, there would be something in us.
	That would be attracted to him, that would seek him, that would feel incomplete without it.
	So that doesn't surprise me at all.
	Again, going back to the two sides of the issue, you don't need Alper's position to explain that.
	Alper would agree with a lot of what you just said.
	Oh, I know, and neuroscientists who would disagree with his explanation of it would also agree with him.
	There's a lot of agreement here.
	It really comes down again to that sort of radio analogy.
	Is it the thing that produces the sound waves or does it receive them from somewhere else?
	So ultimately it comes down to this issue of are you a materialist or are you not?
	Okay.
	What about, let's go back for a second to intelligent design.
	What about the argument that as we look around us every day, Mike, Everything is just as it has to be.
	Now, you can attribute that to a maker, or you can attribute that to the fact that we're here, and we wouldn't be unless it was as it must be.
	We came up in a world where we need this kind of oxygen mix.
	The right gases, the right, you know, there's water, there's everything that we need.
	Well, you can attribute that to a designer, if you wish, or you can attribute it to the fact that it couldn't be any other way, and have a speaker.
	That's true, and someone who, I mean, you've interviewed Hugh Ross before, and this is exactly where Hugh Ross is at, the so-called anthropic principle.
	Right.
	The second option, if I were Hugh Ross, I would say, well, isn't that less of an explanation than the first option?
	Because the first option allows the second to exist, whereas the second one doesn't allow the first to exist.
	In other words, we're designed as intelligent beings, and intelligent beings will at some point ask that question.
	So that's a long way of saying, yeah, you know, both are on the table, both people, you know, both options are held by different people.
	And that's kind of where these arguments stall, you know, which it becomes a philosophical argument rather than a scientific argument, which one is more coherent.
	And that's where the argument takes place.
	I think the argument for theism is more coherent.
	Would you think that if you were addressing a whole room full of ufologists, would you basically tell them they're wasting their time?
	No.
	No.
	If it's ancient alien stuff, I would say, yes, you're wasting your time.
	If it's, again, what I define as serious ufology, again, I think most people who witness these things are being very forthright.
	They're telling the truth.
	I saw this or that.
	So I don't think this is a field that is full of... I mean, we have hoaxers, but I don't think it's full of them or people who want publicity and all.
	Again, we know those people are out there, but for the most part, I think people really are serious about it and really want to know.
	And I'm in that bunch that would like to know.
	And so if we're talking about in our world today, again, back to the technological and the biological question, since I think It's reasonable to discuss the idea that extraterrestrials could exist.
	Then I'd like to know if they do and if this particular sighting or a crash or whatever it is, that might help us answer one of those questions.
	Why not?
	Why shouldn't we be doing that?
	So I don't think they're wasting their time at all.
	Okay.
	Here's one for you.
	This is just a what if.
	I'd kind of like to know how Mike would react.
	Okay, is that alright?
	Sure.
	If we were contacted, if we were suddenly to receive a signal, and that signal verified, was verified by everybody in sight as being extraterrestrial, and the signal included the information that yes, we have been watching you since it all began for you, since you became intelligent beings, And we are your makers.
	I wonder how you personally would react to that.
	I would like proof for that.
	In other words, the fact that you're a communicative being that's been around longer than we have and has some whatever point of superior technology.
	I've learned from my human experience that advanced technology does not translate necessarily to truth telling and good motives or ethics.
	And so I'm going to assume that you perhaps evolved along the same trajectories.
	And so I need you to prove that case.
	And then I'd also like to know, why are you telling me that?
	Are you trying to make me fear you?
	Or are you just preparing, you know, me for your overlordship?
	Or what is it?
	I mean, I would want it to be a conversation rather than a statement.
	And I think a lot of what I would think past that would have a lot to do with the reaction.
	I don't know, perhaps as a father would sit down with a matured son and explain to him that,
	I don't know, um...
	Son, you're 21 now, and I've got to tell you that we adopted you when you were very younger.
	You know, something like that.
	In other words, we had matured to the point that we were prepared or we were ready to hear something like that.
	Right.
	Well, I would want to know.
	I mean, I'd have questions.
	Proof.
	You'd want proof.
	Well, I would want proof, but in that scenario, I'd also want to know why.
	I know you're telling me that I had to be at a certain maturity level.
	I get that part.
	But I'd want to know things about, well, why was I up for adoption?
	What about my biological parent?
	I would want to know what the history is behind that a little bit.
	So I think my own reflex, given the first scenario with the extraterrestrial question, is I think it'd be very natural to have questions that relate to validation.
	I think as human beings.
	That's a normal reflex with us.
	I don't see any reason to suppress it or to hide it at that point.
	All right.
	Hold it right there.
	We've got a break.
	What I want to do is open the phone lines, okay?
	1-855-REAL-UFO.
	That's 855-REAL-UFO.
	From Mike Heiser.
	should be a very, very interesting discussion.
	So, let's get started.
	I'm going to start with the first question.
	Music playing...
	Coming to you from geosynchronous orbit at the speed of light, this is Dark Matter with Art Bell.
	To call Art, please light up the lines at 1-855-REAL-UFO.
	That's 1-855-732-5836.
	My guest is Mike Heiser, and I'd love to have you get into it with him, if you would like to.
	The numbers are easy, 855-REAL-UFO.
	That translates to 8-5-5, 7-3-2, 5-8-3-6.
	And I think the field is wide open.
	In other words, any kind of question you have I think is certainly fair game.
	And I'd invite you to pick up the phone and join in.
	Mike, you think you're ready for some questions?
	Absolutely.
	That's what the show's about.
	That's what it's about, is right.
	Dark Matter, you are on the air with Mike Heiser.
	Hello?
	Yes, hi!
	Yes.
	Hi.
	Mike, I have a question for you.
	Right at the beginning of the show, you mentioned that you needed proof for Well, I didn't say that the Bible is literal.
	ancient aliens and so forth and so on.
	But you set the Bible as set in stone, like it's the law, it's actually literal, but there's
	no proof of the Bible or God.
	Can you provide the proof that there is a God or a Creator?
	Well, I didn't say that the Bible is literal.
	A couple times during the conversation I've pretty much said the exact opposite.
	Your fundamental question is, can I prove that there's a God?
	If you're asking for scientific proof, the answer is no, because, again, the theological idea, the philosophical idea, is that God is distinct from creation, so you can't put him under a microscope and prove him.
	This is why the argument is philosophical, and what I mean by that is, what is more coherent?
	The idea that everything is here because of nothing, or everything is here because of something.
	So, when it comes to the philosophical argument, yeah, I think there are really good philosophical arguments that favor the existence of a being that we would call God.
	Okay, so the being could be God, or it could be an alien, or some other... Well, in terms of an alien, I mean, again, I think we have to be on the same page here.
	I kind of think we are.
	I define the alien as an extraterrestrial life form that is the product of evolution.
	And so that's quite different than God.
	So there's a disconnect there.
	I'd have to hear what you thought about that.
	Okay, because in terms of other civilizations or God or Adam and Eve.
	I mean, I looked at the Bible, and it depends.
	You take some passages as literal, some as metaphoric, and again, you went back to the author, the writers of the Bible.
	How can you prove that what they've written in the Bible itself is literal or metaphoric, or, you know, what do you think about that?
	Well, on one level, I don't care, because I think the point of the Bible is not to teach us science.
	Now, I think creation is something that we should study, something that God would expect us to study.
	Science is just as much of a worthy endeavor as pastoring a church or something like that.
	It's about a set of ideas.
	And I think the ideas, not just with the Bible, but other ancient texts, are coherent.
	We didn't put creation here, the creation we experience in the sea.
	We're not responsible for it, so somebody else must be.
	Again, that takes you into this idea of a creator, and I think that's a reasonable assumption.
	Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, I think that a lot of ideas that talk about previous civilizations and or creatures from elsewhere They're coherent.
	I think a lot of these ideas are coherent.
	And it does seem to me, Mike, that when it comes to those sorts of things, you demand a very great level of proof.
	But when it comes... You know where I'm going, right?
	Yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	That's kind of what the caller is saying here.
	Well, when it comes to the demand for proof for a biological entity, I would like biology.
	When it comes to the demand for proof for a non-biological entity like God, then I think by definition we have to look at it philosophically.
	You know, the rules of logic and things.
	It's kind of the difference between scientific evidence and legal evidence.
	You know, we use them both, but they're not the same, and we can argue about which one's better.
	But the fact is that each of them applies in its different realm.
	And so, you know, I can't reproduce a crime or a crime, you know, some event that happened in court.
	But I can argue, again, using the rules of logic and points of evidence for this scenario is more coherent than this other scenario over here.
	So I think the requirement, the requirements for both are appropriate to the realms in which they're operating.
	So you have faith in God, but in terms of a biological being, you need actual physical proof.
	Your faith in God is basically your proof that there is a Creator, which you call God, correct?
	I would not use the word faith.
	I would use the idea that there is a God is more reasonable.
	I don't really divorce reason and faith, you know, that much.
	And I mean, some people do, some people don't, but I think faith without reason is pretty useless.
	Right.
	I mean, I look at faith as just something in your head, just something that you believe in, but there is no actual proof that faith exists.
	But you do have reasons that you believe in whatever, you know, whatever it is you believe.
	And I think that's perfectly appropriate.
	So what I'm saying is, I believe that it's more coherent to believe in a creator than not.
	To me, that's more reasonable.
	And you know, this isn't a logic class, so we don't need to...
	You know, go down a really boring road for radio, but I'm hoping you get the idea.
	Yeah, I do, I do.
	I'm just trying to understand, like, faith and an actual proof of a biological being, being the Creator.
	Because when it comes to God, we all believe that God, with our faith, not actual proof of any physical proof of an actual God or biological being.
	It's actually a little hard to make a really clean-cut distinction in some regards, because even in the realm of science, there's an interpretive aspect to certain things where we have data.
	Data is produced by scientific observation and inquiry and experimentation and all that.
	But when we think about the data, then we're actually in the other realm.
	Again, we have to form arguments and See if one is more coherent than another.
	You know, how to parse whatever the data is in front of you.
	Right.
	We have hypotheses, right?
	And then we build experiments or studies or research to prove the hypothesis is correct or not, right?
	Right.
	That science, it's really nice, you know, that part of that process is repeatability.
	You know, like, again, in the courtroom, using that as an analogy, You know, you can't depend on that, unfortunately.
	It's just a different realm, but the goals are the same at any rate.
	Okay.
	Well, great.
	Thank you very much.
	Thank you very much for the call, and take care, and let's do this and say, hello there.
	You're on the air.
	Hello, line one, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Hi.
	My question is, he says he doesn't believe And Ancient Aliens wrote about the, you know, the drawings on the Mayan pyramids where they got, you know, a spaceman and a spacesuit and a spaceship.
	Ancient Aliens.
	You know, I would suggest that you go to either YouTube or directly the URL Ancient Aliens Debunked.
	It's a three-hour video.
	It's free.
	It's got almost two and a half million views, and one of the segments is about just that, the so-called Palenque astronaut.
	And I'd invite you to watch it.
	You can also go to the website and get a transcript of the actual video with resources, with sources, where the material was sourced.
	Basically, what's been interpreted as hardware, rocketry, that sort of thing, really are known motifs from other pieces of Mayan art that are about the underworld.
	So it's not about ancient astronauts at all.
	And I know, for someone who's committed to the ancient astronaut view, they're not really going to swallow that.
	Okay, but what I would say is, look, go back.
	This is a good, again, a teaching moment here.
	We want to understand the culture on their terms.
	They didn't make just this one object, they made lots of objects.
	Okay, and some of those objects have texts with them where you get the objects explained.
	Okay, underworld texts.
	So if you compare all of the data, collectively, the ancient astronaut view of that particular artifact is going to disappear.
	And again, my argument is primary source based.
	Okay, when I was 10, I lived in Culver City, California.
	And there's a giant cigar shaped Yeah, I believe you entirely.
	I mean, I believe you saw what you saw, and you're not making it up.
	because it was on a weekend, that it was on the news, and they called it a runaway missile,
	and it was probably back in 1958.
	But missiles don't have windows.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	That's ridiculous.
	Yeah.
	So, I mean, it was only going at two miles an hour.
	I believe you entirely.
	I mean, I believe you saw what you saw, and you're not making it up.
	My only question is, why would you conclude it's extraterrestrial?
	And again, because it's different.
	It's not what you'd normally see.
	But again, lots of people who know more about ufology than I do, you know, have gone through and cataloged all these sorts of objects and technology.
	You know, I really recommend for this one, triangle or otherwise, again, to go to my website drmsh.com, click on the quick links, and then look for my review of Marler's book on triangular UFOs.
	I pull out a lot of images, again from patents and other technologies, back into really the turn of the century, the late 1890s all the way up to today, for all the different shapes.
	And that doesn't mean that what you saw is not extraterrestrial.
	It just means that what you saw has a really good explanation that might compete with that.
	So that's why I'm saying I need more.
	I need a biological entity to move me to that position.
	Well, it's a triangle, you know, and it's hometown.
	I wish I would see one.
	I mean, I, you know, true confessions here.
	Every time I go out and walk the dog, I mean, I look up at the sky just hoping to see something, but I never have.
	So you've never seen anything, huh?
	I've never seen anything.
	All right.
	Well, I think we've got another caller on the line.
	You're on the air with Mike Heiser.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Yes, sir.
	How's it going?
	Just fine.
	Go ahead.
	My question for you is, the human body has a couple different parts that it's not used, and it's just kind of like your appendix and stuff like that.
	Do you think that maybe is there from the creator for a breathing apparatus in a different atmosphere or different Earth?
	And I'll take my question off the air.
	Thank you.
	Well, since I'm not an anatomist, I probably, you know, shouldn't be saying anything here, but I'll venture into this territory.
	My short answer would be that I've never read anything about vestigial organs like that.
	I have done a little reading about vestigial organs, but nothing to that effect.
	I don't know how you would get a breathing apparatus out of your appendix.
	Maybe if it was connected to the lungs or something, you'd have some sort of argument there.
	But other than that, I'm not going to venture Much further into anatomy.
	All right.
	Let's see.
	You're on the air with Mike Heiser.
	Hello.
	Well, my control of these phones seems somewhat marginal.
	Hello there.
	Hey, how you doing?
	Okay, sir.
	Where are you?
	I'm in Philly.
	Philadelphia.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Philadelphia.
	Okay, my question is, when I listen to you, you know, with your theories and your beliefs and, you know, biblical times and the Bible, it kills me that black people have been just excluded from everything.
	And then your source, which you probably would admit, is mostly lies and deception and things have been taken out and added to it.
	So where are you coming up with all this?
	Well, I am really glad you called.
	Believe it or not, this is something I'm really interested in, the whole how the Bible was used to justify really terrible views of racism.
	And again, for your listeners who are interested in this, and for the caller, I would recommend getting a book called Adam's Ancestors.
	It's a scholarly book, it's dense, but you're going to love it, because it shows essentially how this happened.
	And it's not an issue of what's in the Bible, it's an issue of how badly, how poorly people thought about the Bible in the wake of, in the 1500s, discovering new peoples and other continents, discovering the New World.
	I mean, I agree with you.
	I think there's been horrific Bible interpretation that has been foisted on not just the Christian community, but on the African American community that's just ridiculous and shameful, and it's abominable.
	The Bible itself doesn't teach a lot of what people say it teaches, and this is one of the best examples in the world.
	Well, and I understand where you're coming from, but my point is also, like you said, when the Bible was put together in the 14th and 15th centuries, they excluded my people from almost everything.
	Well, everything!
	You know, and so when you do something like that, how can, you know, now in the 21st century, a person like you could speak, you know, with such authority about who the Creator is and what took place during biblical times?
	You know, I feel like until, I mean, you probably got a white Jesus hanging at your house, and until you get rid of that, how can you sit up here and talk about the Creator?
	I mean, it kills me!
	I mean, when I hear white people talk about religion, and I'm black, and they exclude my whole, I mean, I mean everything!
	And they talk with such authority, and I think almost arrogance, I mean, it just kills me!
	Well, I don't have a white Jesus.
	I have a Middle Eastern Jesus because that is the context for Jesus.
	The Bible doesn't talk about white Europeans.
	It knows nothing of Nordic races or white European races or anything like this.
	So what you're attacking and what you're upset with, I'd agree with you.
	Okay?
	It's just really crappy Bible interpretation.
	I don't know how else to put it, but these kinds of ideas that you're reacting against have come, basically because people handled the Bible really, really badly.
	Now, I'll correct you on one point.
	It wasn't put together in the 14th and 15th centuries.
	I was referring to the Reformation.
	That's a Christian tradition.
	It has nothing to do with when the Bible was produced.
	It's much older than that.
	But it's a Mediterranean-centered document.
	It's an ancient Near Eastern-centered document.
	You can say blacks are excluded, There's actually more African-American material in the Bible than there is white European material.
	There's no white European material.
	It's a totally foreign world.
	Mike, hold it right there.
	I've got to get control of some software here, so stand by.
	we'll take a bit of an early break and we'll be right back with mike heiser
	travels strange stories
	on the
	the the
	the you
	We still have time, we might still get by.
	Every time I think about it, I want to cry.
	With bombs in the devil, and the kids keep coming.
	No way that we'd be easing the time to be young But I still want to pretend I was doing alright
	There's nothing left to do at night It's so crazy, oh yeah
	It's XM, baby, and we're very serious To call Art Bell, please manipulate your communication device and call 1-855-REAL-UFO.
	That's 1-855-732-5836.
	My guest is Mike Heiser.
	Anything you'd like to ask is absolutely fair game.
	Do not be afraid to ask hard questions or make challenging statements.
	That's what we're here for.
	That's kind of one of those anything goes things.
	Mike, welcome back, and if you're ready, we're going to go back to the lines.
	We've got control of them now, I hope.
	On the air with Mike Heiser.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Yes, hi.
	Hi, Roswell.
	This is a very interesting subject that I think that everybody contemplates at some point.
	My question is, And it pertains to something that I've seen when I was younger.
	I've seen a creature that was obviously not human, but did contain, that did possess obvious technology that was not introduced to us until Much later years.
	I want to know exactly what you saw.
	Was this a humanoid type creature or what?
	This was a humanoid lizard type person.
	I was within four feet of it.
	I lived in the Midwest.
	In the Midwest in the 1970s, we had no air conditioning units.
	You left your windows open in the summertime.
	Being a kid, the storm windows that you have, you know, to keep the bugs out.
	Mine was busted out from Uh, basketball.
	So it was just basically an open window.
	I was, I was sitting in bed.
	I've always been a very light sleeper and I found myself sitting up and I was watching the back of a creature that was obviously lizard type creature.
	Um, this creature, I was fascinated, but as a kid, I don't think being a kid, you get scared at just observing things.
	Um, I observed this thing in fascination.
	This thing turned around and looked at me.
	I looked right at its eyes, and I didn't see eyes.
	What I'd seen were what looked like glass bulbs that had a red tinge around the very edge of it, such as what you would see maybe as nighttime vision.
	That's hypothetical to me because I don't have that in my possession.
	I never had that in my possession.
	Other than what I look back on and review it.
	You said you were a kid.
	How old were you?
	I was 11 years old.
	11 years old and you were not asleep.
	I was not asleep.
	I was sitting up in my bed observing this as it was going through the items that I had on my dresser.
	And when this thing turned around and looked at me, Um, it probably looked at me for what seemed like a long time, but in reality was probably two to three seconds.
	Now, this is where people think that, and they laugh at me, that it's hokey pokey.
	This thing took, uh, its hand, which did have fingers.
	I don't recall how many fingers it had, and they weren't like dexterous fingers like human fingers.
	It was actually like animal-type, Fingers and it touched a yellow belt that it was wearing and I watched this thing disappear Okay, now I don't know how much time had passed but I then like regained a Consciousness my closet door was open and this same creature was rummaging around in my closet I was still not panicked because it was moving slow and
	This thing did turn, you know, and observe me.
	It was observing my condition of me observing it.
	Once it observed that I had seen it again, this thing moved so fast that it was like a strobe light.
	And it leaped right out that open window.
	And that's when I panicked.
	As a kid, I panicked when it moved fast.
	When it didn't move fast, I was able to observe it with fascination.
	I then screamed.
	Ran to my parents' room.
	My parents came, opened, you know, turned on the light, looked around.
	My closet door was obviously open.
	Things had been strewn out of it and whatever.
	I slept in my parents' room.
	They didn't believe me.
	The next morning, I checked on everything that I could find, you know, that might be disturbed in my room.
	Earlier that day, in the 1970s, the elderly people that lived next door to me, they had a yard sale and I bought a huge Rand McNally dictionary for $1.
	That's the only thing I could find that was missing from my room.
	Besides, there was a mess that I hadn't made.
	What do you think you encountered?
	No, no, I don't think I encountered something demonic, and I don't necessarily think I experienced anything that was extraterrestrial, because I didn't see any kind of a flying object or anything, but I did see... Okay, well let me rephrase it.
	What do you think you did encounter?
	I think I encountered that some sort of secretive subculture that has technology that observes or was trying to learn more about us and gathering information.
	And here's what happened.
	The very next night, I waited for this thing.
	I sat up all night waiting for this thing to come through my window with a baseball bat.
	I know it sounds crazy.
	We're short on time here, so did it come in or not?
	No, but the third night, I was getting a drink of Kool-Aid and I seen my mother had a plant that had toothpicks in it.
	It was a potato plant sitting in the windowsill in the kitchen.
	I was drinking Kool-Aid and I seen the hand come up and lift that thing up out of that and I looked out, I peeked out and I got scared because of the previous experience.
	Yes.
	And I seen this thing packing this thing into a cardboard box.
	This thing then picked that cardboard box up, looked at me now for the second time that it had seen me.
	Our garage was detached.
	This thing took about four steps and leaped up on the top of our garage and walked off towards the back where I couldn't see it.
	I couldn't wait until the next morning to get out there and climb up on top of the garage to see if there was some sort of fort, a nest, or anything.
	There was no evidence.
	There was nothing.
	Okay, well, it sounds to me like you drank the Kool-Aid, all right.
	Mike, yeah, laugh, I know, but people have these encounters.
	Sure, absolutely.
	He described a creature that was lizard-like.
	Into what category, pray tell, would you put that?
	Well, the not-shocking answer is, I don't know what the guy saw.
	I mean, I could take up the time and go through the four or five different categories of people who've studied abduction research, and the so-called old hag, and the night terrors, and all this stuff, and come up with categories that this could go into.
	But ultimately, I don't know what the guy saw.
	Mike, does your philosophy allow for demons?
	Demonic entities?
	I believe in a non-materialist.
	I'm a theist.
	I'm not a materialist.
	I believe in the so-called, for lack of a better term, spiritual world.
	Non-human intelligences that are disembodied and all that kind of stuff.
	I'm going to say something.
	This might be a little controversial here.
	Well, you're a little controversial.
	I mean, in what you believe and demand evidence for versus what you have faith in and don't.
	Okay, go ahead.
	Go ahead.
	If this happened to somebody that I knew personally, we had a good relationship, the first thing I would want to know was, were you living near a military installation, or do you have near relatives in the military?
	Now, the reason it's controversial is, as I will confess, I have been influenced by the work of people like Leah Haley, who believe a lot of this stuff, you know, the whole MyLab thing, You know, for somebody like her who was deeply entrenched in abduction research and this sort of stuff, for her to take the position she does now and for the reasons she does, that would be really, really, really on the forefront of my mind.
	Again, if this happened to me or somebody, you know, that I Particularly new, but ultimately, the honest answer is I don't really know what the guy saw.
	I think there could be interdimensional realities, spiritual realities, and it's all vocabulary we have to use for this non-material world.
	Again, I'm not a materialist, so I believe these things could exist, but if you're going to put it in the extraterrestrial category, I'd like to first know that there are such biological entities as opposed to You know, some other description, non-biological description.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Let's see.
	You are on the air with Mike Heiser.
	Hello.
	Hello, Art.
	Yes.
	Hey, Roswell.
	First time caller.
	I'm this west from northern Michigan right now.
	I just wanted to ask your guest what his ideas, his thoughts are on other dimensions, higher dimensions, And which is something that really cannot be proved, actually.
	And if he does believe in a God, does he or does he not believe if it's like a multi-dimensional being, which in itself means that it cannot be proved?
	All right, let's start with the dimensions.
	Theoretical Kids right now thinks there may be 11.
	What do you think?
	I don't see any reason to deny that there would be, you know, more than All these dimensions.
	I mean, you know, the caller's right.
	I mean, you don't, you can't, you know, you can't necessarily prove these things.
	Again, they're postulates and there are ways you can sort of attack the problem that make it more or less coherent.
	But I mean, I don't, I don't see anything problematic about it.
	I mean, who, who ultimately knows?
	You know, yeah, if, if, if there is a God, that God, that deity could, by definition, Sure.
	We just don't.
	Exist outside our time and space and intrude upon our time and space, you know, come and go all that sort of thing
	I don't have any problem with those suggestions by the world of physics, you know theoretical physics
	Okay, and about thank you, all right, you're very welcome Take care or God could exist across all of those dimensions
	Sure, we just don't we don't know. Okay first time not first time. What am I talking about?
	You're on air with Mike Heiser.
	Hello, one number, many people.
	Hello?
	Hi.
	Hi, my question... Hello?
	Yeah, go ahead, hon.
	Yeah, go ahead.
	Okay, I'm sorry.
	My question is saying kudos, Roswells, and hello, Mike.
	Um, there's something going on in the Middle East.
	Does that make the Christianity-Muslim fighting a moot point?
	That the Bible really doesn't matter much other than a directional?
	And my other... In addition to that, do you think that... Okay, hold on.
	Hold on to the answer to that question.
	I'm not sure I got it straight.
	Mike?
	Yeah, I don't...
	I'm not quite sure what the caller's asking, either.
	Right, okay.
	Again, please, what are you asking about the Middle East?
	Well, with the Muslims and all their fighting and they're saying that they have to beat the Christians and this and this, does it really... I mean, where does that fall into theology and the God image and the whole ball of wax?
	Is that a moot point?
	Is it useless?
	I mean, is it just something they're taking to extremes for no reason?
	I'm not sure I'm getting a view still.
	Well, I'll take a stab at it.
	Go ahead.
	I'm not quite sure either.
	If the question is, is all this stuff in the Middle East now about Bible prophecy, I'm one that would say no.
	I don't really see a real one-to-one connection there.
	If it's something bigger than that, that, you know, yeah, there's fighting and there's wars and I mean, Jesus did talk about that this is going to go on and on and on.
	Well, then there's that connection, but I'm not quite sure what she's asking beyond that.
	Yeah, it's more or less in that ball right there, what you had just said, the answer.
	My other thing was to do with creation.
	Do you think that with our higher intellect, that that is basically Not to be rude, but you could take a redneck and try to explain something to them and they're not getting it, whereas you could take a scholar and it's the most simplest thing to them.
	Do you think that our intellect allows us to see these other dimensions and things that other people wouldn't comprehend?
	Yeah, I don't see how someone's grasp of this or that piece of content, in other words their intelligence, I don't
	see any correlation of that being some sort of gateway to seeing other dimensions.
	So I guess that's the best way I can answer that.
	Okay, very good.
	You are on the air with Mike Heiser.
	Now you're on the air, I think.
	Hello.
	Hey, this is Tunze.
	Hi there.
	I had a question about the UFOs.
	Well, one third of the angels fell with Satan.
	Could the UFOs be manifestations of the angels?
	Because they're not leaving sonic booms.
	They're not leaving vapor trails or anything.
	So could it be just manifestations that they have projecting onto us as a way to deceive us from God?
	You know what I mean?
	Yeah, I'm just waiting to see if you were done.
	This will open up a can of worms here.
	First, I don't actually believe that there's any passage in the Bible that says one-third of the angels fell with Satan.
	That comes from Revelation 12, but the comment about the third of the stars is actually in connection with the first coming of Jesus, so it's not...
	The whole idea of an angelic rebellion, as far as the Bible goes, I think is something of a myth.
	So you can tell I'll get some good email out of that one.
	I mean, I do believe that there are angels and demons and all this kind of stuff.
	I just don't believe that particular thing.
	But let's just set that to the side.
	The whole thing about UFOs and angels, to me, when we talk about UFOs, we're talking about craft.
	about entities that are humanoid.
	Angels in the Bible are always depicted in human appearance, which is quite different than these craft.
	They don't need craft.
	Again, if this is an interdimensional reality, you don't need nuts-and-bolts technology to carry you from one place to another.
	If you have command over dimensional passage, you don't need to get into anything that's going to burn fuel to get you there.
	All right.
	Um, let's see.
	You're on the air with Mike Heiser.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Hi.
	You got me?
	I got you.
	Hey, this is Billy.
	How y'all doing today?
	Fine, Billy.
	Good.
	I've got a couple, I've got a couple questions.
	I got a point to, I got a point to make.
	And, uh, first of all, you read that you're all over the, we're all over the page here.
	First, we got a creator, which is the Lord, right?
	Okay, so you need a biological point.
	Well, let's just say here, if an alien kidnapped us, would you think that he would need a biological point too?
	You know, everything is molecular.
	It's made up by molecular.
	And if you have a creator, You know what I'm saying?
	Okay, Mike, you're breathing into the phone.
	Okay.
	Okay, there you go.
	Go ahead, Mike.
	Okay, Mike, you're breathing into the phone.
	Okay.
	Okay, there you go.
	Go ahead, Mike.
	I'm trying to find my dualist.
	I just want to raise my two other points, and then I'll leave you alone here.
	Okay, with the African American that was talking earlier, now if you read in the Bible that
	when they had Cain and Abel, and Cain killed Abel, right?
	Well, the Lord came to Cain and he put a mark on his body and he said that he will be recognized from now on with this mark.
	Now, could you believe that's where black people came from?
	But also, when he sent them out in different tribes, remember?
	When he had the land of Babel, okay?
	He sent them all out in different tribes.
	Now, that's how we get the separation of races.
	Of races, not racist.
	Races.
	Alright, can I interject there?
	Sure!
	Okay.
	No, I don't believe that the Cain and Abel story has anything to do with black people, with the African-American race or the Negro race.
	There are no physical characteristics attached to any of the tribes or nations in the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 up until the 20th century.
	Well, late 19th century.
	Let's be generous here.
	Race was defined in terms of language and religion, and that's the way it always was in the Bible.
	You define a person's race by what language they spoke and what God they worshipped.
	That was separated.
	Okay, those things were separated, severed, to make a biological argument by, believe it or not, The Nazis, okay?
	Early Nazi thinking because of their wish to identify a particular biological set of characteristics with what they perceived to be an original race.
	So, again, the Bible doesn't reason that way because they didn't know anything about science.
	They're not doing biology.
	You know, nowadays we go by genetic lineage and differentiation.
	You know, were more sophisticated than they were in the 19th century, and certainly in, you know, real primitive times, the second millennium B.C.
	or something like that.
	So I think a lot of this racial theory, this racial talk that people try to attach to the Bible, like I told the African-American caller, is really misguided, and it's really contrary to the biblical world.
	Yes.
	But you know, when they split them up, it was a different tribe.
	Moses walked around and split them all up, different tribes.
	Then they had the land of Babel, which was... If you go back and look at the Table of Nations, all those names are not actually people.
	Some of them are locations.
	Some of them are tribal groups.
	Some of them are geographical regions and things like that.
	Again, I would suggest that it's because of a very careless reading, again, this goes back to the late 19th century, of passages like Babel that we get a lot of the racism that we've been living through in the 20th century and still in the 21st century.
	And the Bible just doesn't think on those terms, because it wasn't about physical characteristic, it was about language.
	And about, again, which part of divine turf are you on, and what God do you worship, and that sort of thing.
	So my view of these passages is really linked to the biblical world itself, and not what Christians or Jews or Aryans or whoever, Europeans, did with the Bible in later times.
	Okay, what do you think about the, you were saying you were needing that biological proof What biological proof would it take for you to be, to gain your faith, and to believe?
	This is an excellent question, and I'm going to have to be a little careful here because it actually takes me into sequel territory.
	I'm almost done with the sequel to The Facade, which is called The Portent.
	I'll try not to dance too badly here.
	Let me say it this way.
	It would be sufficient to me to either have something microbial, the elements of which could not come from Earth.
	In other words, non-terrestrial, clearly non-terrestrial elements.
	Something that's microbial or bigger that had to go by the same set of criteria.
	Again, non-terrestrial stuff.
	Now the problem is, If you know what synthetic biology is, and if your listeners are interested or want to find out about it, look at the book called Regenesis.
	It's by the guy who teaches genetics at Harvard.
	Synthetic biology means not only can we read DNA, but we can write it from the atomic level on up.
	And what that means is that in our near future, 10, 20, 30 years out, we will be actually able to create DNA that has never existed before and cannot exist on Earth.
	Now, if you have someone that can do that, they can actually fake best evidence.
	And that's the problem.
	Again, since I read a lot of this weird stuff, this weird technology stuff, it's a little scary.
	Because since I'm into ufology, I take the whole paranoia of the military-industrial complex pretty seriously.
	I'm suspicious of it.
	I'm suspicious of the black world.
	And if they're talking about this at Harvard, I know they're talking about it in other places.
	And so it's a little frightening for me.
	So I'm being honest with you, that would do it for me.
	But in the back of my mind, I'd still be wondering, okay, is this real?
	Or did somebody make it to create a... Almost like a genetic Photoshop.
	It's even worse.
	Look, nowadays, think of what you could do, Art.
	If you have the ability to write your own DNA, you just make it up, and now marry that to 3D printers, that idea, that piece of technology.
	I mean, it's really frightening.
	It is just honest-to-goodness frightening that if someone wanted to, they could do that kind of thing.
	To move people towards certain sets of beliefs that would put them in situations where their behavior was predictable to steer them in certain directions.
	Yeah, I wonder what you're going to do then, Mike.
	I'm serious, what are you going to do then?
	When somebody can come forth with a creature that they have, in essence, created, and they're going to present it to you, and you're going to have biological evidence in front of you, then what?
	This is why I write fiction.
	I want to confront myself with that problem.
	The honest answer is, I don't know.
	I would sort of be predisposed to thinking, okay, this is probably real.
	I'm probably being too paranoid, again, to think that someone would have this kind of power And would want to wield it for, you know, what, you know, God only knows what purpose again, but I'm just telling you, maybe I've been in ufology too long, but I just have this strong, again, suspicion that, you know, if I can think these thoughts, people who are a lot smarter than me can think these thoughts too, you know, and it's kind of a dilemma.
	All right.
	Hello there.
	You're on the air with Mike Heiser.
	Hello.
	Hi.
	Hello, how are you doing, Art?
	Fine.
	I love your show.
	Your show is so wonderful and inspiring.
	I have a real great question for, oh, what's his name?
	Mike Heiser.
	Mike Heiser, yes.
	You have just explained a whole lot of things that would basically, a belief in God.
	I'll get to the first part when I started holding here.
	You were saying that there was a DNA struggle between science and theology created from Adam and Eve.
	It couldn't be done with just a couple, and then it went to Moses and he had four sets.
	But that doesn't explain the fact that we have discovered in the past cavemen, chromagnums, Neanderthals that pre-existed Adam and Eve with their DNA.
	Why would we assume that they pre-existed Adam and Eve?
	Because they're going back millions and millions of years ago.
	And why would we presume that Adam and Eve couldn't as well?
	Well, that's where I'm, you know, I'm not a theologist or a PhD or a scholar or anything like that.
	You don't need to be.
	Listening to you, and you're saying, just out here recently, of someone being able to write a DNA.
	Well, I keep listening to this show, and I look up in the stars, and all the vast universe, and all the stars and beings and beings upon trees, and it's like infinity up there, and I'd have to be pretty naive to think that we were the only little speck in the infinite world, that there life exists as we know it.
	You know, I would assume that there was something somewhere in some far away galaxy or whatever.
	How come they haven't reached that technology that they can write DNA and say, oops, made a mistake, I'm gonna throw it over here on this rock, let it grow, you know, and see what happens.
	So, and the way you're describing it to me is, there's my God, He just created us.
	So who is He?
	Who created Him?
	Someone did the same thing to them and threw them on a rock and let them grow?
	I don't understand.
	What you're doing is you're taking points of data, you're taking specific ideas, and you are connecting them, which is a normal impulse.
	But the question is, is that connection Is it coherent?
	Is it compelling?
	Is it the only connection that can be made?
	The answer to all three of those is no, no, and no.
	So I wouldn't be too disturbed over the fact that you can think those connections that doesn't make them real.
	I certainly would not say that because we can do something now that somebody did before back in Adam and Eve.
	I have no basis to make that sort of statement and nobody else does either.
	All we're describing is, to be really blunt about it, and I think based on other guests that Art has had now and in the past, we're going to get ourselves in a whole lot of trouble, because we seem to be hurtling toward this, fulfilling this impulse, which isn't a good one, that is to be as gods.
	You know, that's what frightens me.
	It's not the idea that we can do this, and now I'm going to project that back into the remote past, and that must be why we're here.
	Again, my concern is really the here and now, that we are at this point where we're entertaining some of these thoughts.
	And again, I am not predisposed to thinking that people in power who have these technologies are only thinking about wonderful ways to use them.
	Mike, does it scare you to hear what people embrace and believe these days?
	Boy, that's probably your most loaded question of the night.
	Yeah.
	I mean, it does.
	And part of the reason it does is not necessarily the conclusion.
	I mean, you know, This person's a theist, this person's not, this person's a Christian, this person's not.
	What really frightens me, and the way you ask that question, is that people often believe things, and the path that they take to get there makes absolutely no sense at all.
	In other words, they don't check for evidence, they don't test, they don't probe this connection to that connection, they just move to the next connection.
	People seem to be... I think part of this is the information explosion.
	There's so much out there and it's so wearying to think that I have to think about all this stuff.
	So there's this propensity to sort of just take a narrative and I like it and I'm going to go with it and that's where I'm at.
	So it's this unexamined, you know, unprobed sets of ideas that just sort of get jumbled together and people come out somewhere on the other end.
	Because if that's the way you're thinking, You can be led to believe almost anything.
	All right.
	Stay right where you are, and we'll be right back.
	This is Dark Matter.
	Mike Heiser is my guest.
	I'm Art Bell.
	Great to be with you this evening.
	What do you believe?
	We were on fire, no one could save me but you.
	Strange words as I make foolish people Oh
	Oh Oh
	So So
	So It's xm baby and we're very serious
	To call Art Bell, please manipulate your communication device and call 1-855-REAL-UFO.
	That's 1-855-732-5836.
	Isn't it fascinating?
	We do, we live in an incredible information age, and maybe we're beginning to morph into a situation where all beliefs sort of get mixed up That's the scariest thing you've said all night, Art.
	Man, it's really scary.
	and then somehow or another settled on and it all comes through the internet
	which is pretty quick mike that's the scariest thing you've said all night art
	uh...
	man it it's from it's really scary it really is because there's
	just no there's no filter
	you know there and and you marry that to the
	real suspicion of authority you know that that this generation
	you know has it's growing up with the internet has It's not all their fault.
	It's not all the Internet's fault.
	Authority began to go out the window with Richard Nixon.
	That's true.
	That's true.
	We are living, unfortunately, we're living on the very bad capital of A lack of leadership, a lack of ethics, a lack of trustworthiness.
	You marry that to access to lots of information and I don't really care to have you help me sift it.
	I'm going to do it myself.
	It's just a free-for-all.
	It really is.
	I remember when I was 13 or 14, Mike, you could go to the TV and one day the news would come on and a guy from the FBI would come to the podium and he would tell you this or that.
	And it was like gold.
	I mean, everybody just flat believed it.
	If the FBI said it, hey baby, it was true.
	Today, the exact opposite is true.
	If some sort of government official, and by the way, the government did close, by government, if some government official comes to the mic and says something, people almost automatically disbelieve it.
	To use a biblical phrase, we are reaping what we have sown.
	Apparently.
	You're on the air with Mike Heiser.
	Hello.
	Hi Art.
	Hi.
	I have a question for Dr. Heiser.
	This is Josh in Utah.
	Have you ever considered the possibility that some UFOs might be from ancient civilizations, considering the things that were built back then?
	Mike thinks about that all the time.
	He thinks, right?
	Yeah, I would say not on the basis of things that are built.
	Again, I know it's boring, I'll admit that, but a lot of people don't really spend the time to read the high-level, dense, detailed stuff by specialists like in ancient engineering and technology.
	are put out in what we call in academia the fugitive literature that only people in the
	guild are going to read. I do read a lot of that stuff, and I don't think we need aliens
	to explain the pyramids and Baalbek and all these sorts of things. But having said that,
	I thought you were going to go to time travel with the question.
	No, I mean, time travel might be possible, but there's other theories out there.
	Let's say that science and physicists at some point were able to really nail this down.
	It was possible, not only possible, but, you know, we know it can be done.
	And then the question comes, well, did somebody else figure this out and do it?
	I mean, that's, again, it's a different kind of question, but I actually think that's worth more time thinking about than stuff like the ancient alien view puts out.
	To me, there's more of a rational basis for that, assuming we ever get That point of knowledge, that it's real.
	The only thing that bothers me about you, Mike, is that you seem to have one standard of proof for anything alien, whether contemporary or ancient, and another standard of proof for anything that is biblical or involves creation or the Creator.
	Oh, I don't think so.
	I think I'm actually pretty simple.
	I proceed from some really simple assumptions.
	Well, you dance well, Mike.
	You dance well.
	No, I'm trying to be honest.
	I'm trying to let your listeners understand the way I think.
	I'm trying to be honest, too.
	Right.
	I'm just giving you my observation.
	Right.
	And that's fine.
	You know, for a biological entity, I need biological proof.
	God isn't a biological entity.
	I don't think we can prove God.
	So we're left to philosophical arguments.
	What's more coherent as opposed to what isn't.
	So again, I don't have blind faith.
	You're on there with the man who doesn't have blind faith.
	Hello.
	Hello, gentlemen.
	Yes.
	Well, we separated off in the DNA, and I wish I'm going to be a little bit vague because
	I don't remember the professor that wrote this book, but he wrote a book for college
	on chemical evolution.
	And as I understood him, he said for a while that was like the given textbook used to explain
	chemical evolution across the country.
	And then one of his students challenged him about the question as to where does information
	come from?
	Where does the information that's in the DNA actually evolve from?
	And I guess I'd be interested just in your thoughts on that, Art, your thoughts on that.
	And then I think he was saying, you know, for life to exist, it takes DNA.
	For initial life to exist, it takes DNA to, you know, as a blueprint to build life.
	And so prior to life, what would be the precursor to DNA that would even, well, I guess, you know, where would the DNA come from?
	And again, it's complex.
	And as sophisticated as it appears to be, I mean, this is a blueprint tied up in a microscopic piece of biology.
	And this challenged this professor's belief that evolution, life, could exist without a creator.
	But when the student got him thinking about that, It got him rethinking as to evolution and origins.
	And I do apologize, I don't recall this professor's name.
	It's been about a year since I looked at his material.
	Well, that's a design argument.
	And in fairness to the people who don't accept intelligent design, they would more or less say, well, we know all about That particular argument that before you have DNA, you have to have elements and they have to come together to form DNA as we know it.
	But they will attribute that to, again, even though it looks designed, they'll attribute it to a process that does not have a creator behind it.
	And that's sort of illustrative of where the argument's at.
	First of all, do we have design You know, we're looking at this and we think it's design because, holy cow, it's incredibly complex.
	Is this design or is it random?
	And at that point, it becomes a philosophical argument.
	Which one makes more sense?
	That's what I mean by these philosophical arguments.
	Which one just makes more sense?
	Which one's more coherent?
	And you'll find people on both sides of that, which is why we have a debate over intelligent design.
	That's right.
	Okay, you're on the air with Mike Heiser.
	Hello!
	Hi, Mike.
	I've really enjoyed the conversation.
	I guess I come from a very different kind of thinking.
	I'm from Continental Philosophy schools, like Jacques Derrida and some of the deconstructionist thinkers.
	So I guess I'm approaching all of your notions a little differently.
	But I guess I have a little problem with the point you made, where you said you're disturbed by the fact that people's path to belief makes no sense at all.
	It seems to me that your very definition is that.
	So, you know, if you have faith in something, that's a path to belief.
	That makes no sense.
	You are taking a leap.
	I would agree if the path is full of unreasonable conclusions and arguments.
	Well, let me make an argument about time, then.
	From some of the thinkers that I read, the notion of time itself requires a kind of relational thinking, where the present moment is a relation of past to future, So the now is never available to us immediately, which means that presence itself is a problem.
	The sovereign subject, the person that's in control of, you know, thinking itself.
	If you're a dualist thinker, you're holding on to the idea that there is a sovereign subject that is present in the now, and I would argue that that's a kind of irrational thinking.
	Well, I would say that the fact that we cannot come to grips or cannot explain that Now, is one thing as far as that being the, you know, the taking that inability and drawing a conclusion from it like you've just drawn.
	I don't know that that's necessarily coherence.
	It seems like an argument from our inability.
	But I mean, someone who and I'm not saying I take this position, this whole God outside of time thing, which has some significant problems, which you're probably already aware of.
	But it also has, you know, its adherence, you know, within cosmology and philosophical theology that the arguments sort of aren't really relevant to a being such as that.
	And so the path that you've taken to demonstrate that this being is in this moment that doesn't exist, that moment wouldn't exist in our dimension, if we can use that term.
	Whereas it would not be relevant in a different dimension.
	I mean, there's any number of... Again, I'm not saying I'm married to any of these positions, but I'm trying to illustrate for the audience that there are other ways to take the same set of ideas and wind up somewhere else.
	I guess I would argue that thinking itself occurring within this kind of time, any notion that there's something outside of that, if you're arguing for, like, a god that exists outside of time, It's unthinkable and in some sense nihilistic, because it's opposed to life, which occurs within time, and that's the way we experience it.
	So wanting something outside of time is in a sense a kind of nihilism or denial of life.
	I would agree that that's a good argument against it.
	I don't argue that God is outside of time.
	I would argue that God can be In our time, or he cannot be.
	In other words... But if God's in our time, this is a radically different God than a traditional Christian God.
	Now we're talking about a... It might be radically different than the Christian thinkers you're thinking of or accustomed to.
	But I'll give you an example, and it gets really... You sound like the guy that would enjoy this sort of reading.
	If you go up to William Lane Craig's homepage, he spends a lot of his career Frankly, on this God and time sort of thing, showing that, hey, it's really kind of theologically scary to have God completely outside of time.
	And one of the arguments is just exactly what you said.
	Another one would be, if God exists out of time, then how can he really empathize with our experience?
	And that has implications for things like prayer and whatnot.
	A lot of Christian theologians are not where you're putting them.
	What makes you think he has anything to do with our experience at a macro level anyway?
	Again, that's just a theological statement, and you can approach it two ways.
	You could say, well, the Bible says that, and that would be one argument.
	The other way to look at it is reasoning from the analogy of ourselves.
	And that is, well, if I would have made things, it seems more reasonable that if I made something, I'd like to at least watch it, if not spend time with it, as opposed to not.
	And so, again, that's where the philosophical argument lands, and that's the ground on which it's fought.
	Okay, well, thanks a lot.
	I really appreciate the conversation.
	You've got me, too.
	Take care.
	Here's somebody, Shep, who says, Mike, Mike says that a lot of people's path to belief makes no sense.
	But faith is itself, by definition, a path to belief that does not make sense.
	Isn't his fundamentalism caught up in the same problem?
	Well, first, I'm not a fundamentalist.
	The people who fired me from my last teaching job would certainly say I'm not.
	So, I'm not in that camp.
	And I think that's the same question that the previous caller just asked.
	That's right.
	Basically, yeah, it's true.
	I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's true.
	That not all beliefs are equally coherent.
	Not all paths to a certain conclusion are equally coherent.
	I don't think that's really going out too far in a limb.
	Okay, I can believe that pink bunny rabbits, you know, invaded the earth millions of years ago.
	Okay, I believe it.
	Does that make it coherent?
	No, it doesn't.
	They're not all the same.
	Okay.
	Uh, you're on the air with Mike Heiser.
	Hello?
	Uh, yes.
	Is this the Starbell?
	It is.
	Hello, Art Belk.
	Roswell to you, sir.
	I'd like to thank you for your services and all the entertainment you've given us over the years.
	Thank you, sir.
	Okay.
	Mr. Michael, Dr. Michael, excuse me.
	I've got a question.
	And in the Bible it says that man was created in the image of us.
	Speaking of God, I guess, when he says us, what does he mean by that?
	I mean, when he says, is there more than one God?
	What does it mean when he says a man was created in the image of us?
	I'll answer you quickly, but just so that you know, if you go to my website, drmsh.com, go to the quick links and click on the quick link page to click on the word Elohim and you'll get This answer written out so you don't have to try to remember it.
	They let us create humankind in our image.
	Again, these plurals are well known.
	They are what's called grammatically the plural of exhortation.
	If I walk into a room and I say, hey, let's go get pizza.
	I am a single speaker speaking to a group.
	This is exactly the same thing that's happening in Genesis.
	God is speaking to who?
	Well, I would say the heavenly host, the angels, whatever, the inhabitants of the spiritual world, whatever, saying, hey, I have a great idea, let's make humankind in our image.
	Now, that plural implies that the image, whatever that is, and I have my own view of that, which you can read about, is shared between God and these other beings, the heavenly host, angels, whatever, Elohim, whatever, and humans.
	There's something shared there.
	And I think the image is not a quality like sentience or thought or prayer or whatever.
	I think it's a status.
	I think it has to do with representation, ruling representation.
	We are God as though he were here.
	We are his representatives.
	It's equally shared.
	And the angels are God's representatives in whatever domain God gives them, okay?
	That's the short answer.
	So, I'm a single speaker.
	I'm speaking to a group, and in the case of Genesis, when the creation actually happens, God created humankind in His image.
	There's a singular pronoun, and the verb is singular, and the subject is singular.
	There is only a single creator in Genesis 1, but that creator announces it to a group.
	And here's where I depart, obviously, from Sitchin.
	And even in the Mesopotamian text, the Anunnaki If you actually go and look at the Atrahasis Epic and Uma Elish, the Anunnaki do not create humankind, but they are in the room.
	They're watching.
	A single deity does the creation.
	So there's a relationship there, but not the one that Sitchin is going to argue for, or did argue for.
	All right.
	You're on the air with Mike Heiser.
	Hello.
	Hey, Art Roswell.
	Thank you.
	Mike?
	Yes.
	My name is Mike, too.
	I guess two Mike Simmons don't make a right, huh?
	I would agree.
	If God created everything, then who or what created God?
	And I'll take my answer off there.
	Thanks, Mark.
	You're very welcome.
	Well, my answer, since I'm a theist and a dualist, is that there was nothing before, you know, God.
	So, again, that's a philosophical position.
	I don't believe that string theory or universes burping other universes into existence answers this question at all.
	All it does is set up an infinite regress.
	What about the universe before that one?
	What about the one before that one?
	It doesn't really do anything.
	We're back to the, are we monists or are we dualists?
	That kind of thing.
	I once heard somebody say something that I found fascinating and it was that In the beginning, there was God, and only God.
	And that he, in essence, became lonely, and so blew himself up.
	And that was the Big Bang.
	And we are all, therefore, a part of God.
	Randomly tossing that out there.
	No biological proof for you.
	No, I know.
	That's actually Gnosticism, which doesn't mean it's a bad word.
	And if you hold that position, Art, here's something for you to wrestle with, because I remember you talking about that, and you finding some real, you know, there's an emotional impact, you know, that that had with you, that you really like that argument.
	But if you hold that, you have to be a materialist.
	In other words, you don't really have a consciousness outside of the material world, because if God Is everything and everything is God.
	There is nothing outside the material creation.
	And I don't know if you want to go there intellectually.
	I mean, obviously you can.
	But I've heard a lot of content on your show that would suggest to me that you do think consciousness is different than the material world.
	Now maybe... It may be.
	I'm open to proof, Mike.
	Right.
	Definitely over-proof.
	That's where, right, that's where it has to be.
	Hold tight.
	We're at a break point.
	Final break.
	We'll take it right here and we'll be right back.
	Mike Heiser is my guest.
	If you could read my mind, love What a tale my thoughts could tell Just like an old time movie About a ghost from a wishing well In a castle dark Or a fortress strong with chains upon my feet
	You know that ghost is me And I will never be set free
	As long as I'm a ghost you can't see Thunder
	Music Listen to the wind blow, watch the sun rise
	Run in the shadows, damn your love, damn your lies And if you don't love me now
	You will never love me again I can't do what you say
	And if you were to give up, break the chain I'm not saying anything
	From the area of 51 This is Dark Matter with Art Bell
	To join the show, please call 1-855-REAL-UFO.
	That's 1-855-732-5836.
	By the way, I think you might enjoy the very end of the show tonight.
	Be sure and stick around.
	My guest is Mike Heiser.
	And he's all yours.
	Anything you want to ask, absolutely fair game.
	And so, here we go.
	You're on the air with Mike Heiser.
	Good morning, evening, whatever.
	Well, it's morning here.
	Hey, I'm going to try to be pretty concise with my question and hope I don't lose my train of thought on the way.
	I probably don't believe in God the same way you believe in God, and I definitely don't believe in religion the same way you do.
	I'm kind of a Daoist in that I think the God you can name is not God.
	And so my question is kind of a comment.
	I do believe that I've come in contact with something that is what you would call higher intelligence, because what I experienced, it manipulated, you know, the physical world that I experience every day in its own way.
	And I experienced it the same way I would experience you face to face.
	So I know it's out there.
	I don't know what it is, but it got me to think that If there is a higher intelligence such as this, wouldn't it be easy for them, and if it's not easy, wouldn't it at least be interesting for them to manipulate our world to make them appear God-like?
	That doesn't mean they are God, but they certainly could appear that way to us.
	And one of the things that got me thinking on this direction is, I have a friend who's certain that he met Jesus in a vision, and he wants to tell everybody about it.
	You know, I had what you might call a vision.
	But I'm not going around saying that Jesus or Krishna or any other God came to me.
	Something I witnessed.
	I don't know what it was.
	It opened my eyes up.
	So how can you trust anything you see?
	When I listen to you talk, I think the only thing certain are death and taxes.
	Everything else is just a way to cope.
	Right?
	The old bromide.
	In answer to your first question, could they these higher intelligence appear godlike, I would say yes.
	So that's a fairly straightforward question.
	I'm wondering, is this something that you experienced, this higher intelligence?
	Do you assign personhood to it? Was it a person?
	Well, I'll tell you, my grandma and I both saw it and she was, she was, she believed it may have been my
	grandfather who died before I was born.
	We both experienced something paranormal.
	I just experienced something very strange.
	It was a light, and it had form, and it was a real thing.
	She experienced a light, but it had a different appearance to her.
	So, her impression, she's a very religious person by the way, so I was surprised that she didn't come out of it as a religious experience, but she felt that it was her husband Bob, my grandfather.
	I got no impression from it other than that it was not of, I can't say it was not not of this world, because obviously it was of this world, but it was not something that performed according to the nine-year-old physics that I knew at the time, and never has.
	So there's something else out there.
	I know this.
	I don't know what it is.
	Even though you didn't get an impression.
	I hope you don't mind the conversation here.
	I'm just curious.
	Even though you didn't get an impression, does that rule out a person?
	In other words, personhood for this thing or whatever it was?
	No, not at all.
	In person, in what form?
	I got the impression that it was intelligent.
	Absolutely.
	Did I get the impression that it was human or that it spoke to me in any way?
	No.
	It would be like, if we were a lower form of life, it would be like pulling a fish out of water and saying, hey fish, and that fish would be like, what are you?
	You know, it's another form of life.
	I would say that.
	And it was bright white.
	It was the whitest light I have ever seen.
	But it didn't... It was pure white.
	So you would think... It had all the hallmarks of a religious experience, but I did not get... If anything, it made me less religious and more open-minded to the fact that we are not the end-all be-all.
	The reason I ask, and the...
	The way I'm thinking about personhood, I should have been clear.
	I'm talking about things like intelligence, which of course suggests a decision-making ability.
	In other words, it made a decision to appear to you or something like that.
	I would say even though I can't process that experience because I didn't have it, my own worldview here, again, these are just thoughts that I'm thinking as I'm listening to you.
	The fact that this may have had these personal abilities, that's probably a better way to say it, of course doesn't rule out that there's a higher form that we would call God.
	And I would agree that this form, whatever it is, could appear God-like.
	In other words, all these thoughts that could be extracted from this, I would find not threatening, again, to a theistic worldview.
	And since I accept a theistic worldview, and I'm not a materialist, I could look at you and say, hey, I really think you did have this experience.
	I don't think it was something flickering in your brain that wasn't working right or whatever, that you actually could indeed have this.
	But again, if you and I were friends having a friendly debate over a cup of coffee or something, I would say, hey, maybe you ought to fit this into a theistic worldview.
	That's the way I would process it.
	To me, it is a mystical experience.
	Because I didn't pull anything religious out of it at the time, it still had that effect on my perception of my world as I see it.
	And I can tell you what I saw that defied physics, but I don't expect you to believe it because you were not there.
	You can't experience it the way I did.
	And so when I told my friend who had a seriously religious experience, And it has made him a very religious person.
	I believe him up to a point, but I can never experience what he experienced.
	All I know is what I learned is that I cannot say anything for certain.
	Well, I think you probably could say one thing for certain, that you're not a materialist.
	It seems to me that this experience yanked you out of that category.
	You're right about that, absolutely.
	If we were pals at the coffee house, I would say that's an excellent place to start.
	Art, this is a really good segue for your earlier question about UFO stuff.
	People are not wasting their time.
	I'm referring to what I call serious ufology here.
	I love going to UFO conferences.
	I have colleagues in academia that ask me, what in the world are you doing?
	Do they love you, Mike?
	If they're patient enough to hear me out, yes.
	But, I mean, I tell them, look, the people that listen to, you know, shows like this, you know, like Dark Matter, and of course, you know, Coast to Coast and other shows, I mean, and go to these UFO conferences and are into this, I have found, my experience is that they are the most predisposed to having really good big picture question discussions.
	Which ultimately, you know, fall into the religious category.
	Who are we?
	Why are we here?
	Is there a God?
	All this kind of stuff.
	And I've found a lot more predilection to really getting into discussions of some depth in that area, more so than church.
	I mean, that's just me.
	I like going to those things for that reason.
	People really like to talk about this sort of stuff.
	Oh, they do.
	Very quickly, Rick is asking, what are your thoughts on the camp of thinkers that claim there is no free will?
	We have very little time here.
	I disagree.
	I think if we do not have free will, we cannot image God.
	That's an attribute we share with Him.
	That's the shortest answer I can give you.
	And a good one, too.
	Very quickly, you're on the air with Mike Heiser.
	Hello.
	Hey, Roswell.
	Thanks for having me on.
	Just a quick question, Doctor.
	You guys were talking about some frightening beliefs, and one really scary contingent to me is the New Earth Creationists.
	You know, they think that the planet is 5,000 years old and they've built a museum to prove it.
	I just wondered if you could offer some insight on that.
	You're referring to Young Earth Creationists?
	Like recent Earth?
	Yeah, I would be in the old Earth camp, although I have to say I'm not offended by the idea, because yeah, if God created everything immediate, who am I to say He couldn't do that?
	But I think we need to take science seriously, and I think a lot of it points to old Earth.
	And I know there's arguments on both sides, but I would be more predisposed to be in the old Earth camp.
	Okay.
	We're wrapping it up.
	We're out of time.
	Mike, I want to thank you for being here.
	It's been very stimulating, and at times confusing, but all in all, a wonderful appearance, and I'm sure we'll have you back again.
	And your website again is?
	drmsh.com.
	Art, thank you for having me on, and thank you for coming back.
	Oh, well, you're very welcome.
	It's just a pleasure.
	You know, what would I do without the stimulation?
	Be on the couch doing nothing.
	All right, my friend.
	Thank you.
	Thank you very much.
	And you have a good night, Mike.
	You too.
	Bye-bye.
	This is a song that we wrote for a late-night talk show radio host.
	Art Bell.
	And we had a great time writing this one.
	Midnight in the desert, shooting stars across the sky It's a magical journey, it'll take us on a ride
	Filled with belonging, searching for the truth Will we make it till tomorrow?
	Will the sun shine?
	midnight in the desert and we're listening, we're listening to you.
	Oh good night everybody and remember if you have an idea for what we can call our special
	show, the one on Halloween, I thought just dark matter Halloween but if, listen, you've
	got brainstorm or a vision, be sure and email it to me.
	And don't forget, ghost stories, those can be emailed as well, along with your phone number.
	If it's a good one, we'll call you.
	good night midnight in the desert
	down in the air I'm looking for the answer
	All my life I've felt you there Is the world we live in quicker?
	Are we heeding all the signs?
	Have we lost our intuition?
	Are we running out of time?

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