To be edited…
Below this ‘introduction’ is Large portion/excerpt from the Wikipedia Website on what is being called ‘The Third Man Factor’.
It contains quite a few historical accounts of Explorers and other people who when in dire situations experienced ‘A guiding presence’ that helped them survive perilous trials.
That this is *a real thing* is not in dispute as it has been reported many times.
The reason I’m posting this to Eternal Vigilance Blog is because I wish to discuss what you people (and myself) think this phenomena really is?
Is it (A) a real spiritual encounter with benevolent spirit beings?
Or (B) just a quirky psychological delusion brought on by stress… that just so happens to be encouraging… ie ‘a coping mechanism’ of the mind?
Or (C) something else?
Read the Wiki excerpt below… take in all the details… then ask yourself how this is best explained.
Why did you arrive at your conclusion?
My intention is to expose our *personal prejudices, and aversions* and how they affect our interpretation of facts.
Are we truly open minded and objective thinkers or are we twisted souls with blinders on… that prevent us from being able to perceive the truth?
My contention is most of the atheist world goes through life with blinders on… preventing them from seeing truth and severely limiting their understanding of realty.
I have experienced this myself. I have also experienced the scales falling from my eyes.
I will hazard to assume *Atheists* with jump towards the ‘Secular so-called scientific explanation’ of this phenomena… not because it best fits the facts presented… but on the basis of their own atheist preconceptions they bring with them on this investigation… their rock solid certainty that spirits don’t exist… therefore that explanation can’t be true.
So this must be a psychological phenomena… because that’s the only naturalistic explanation.
The only reason you (atheist) find that a satisfying explanation is because it saves you confronting the uncomfortable probability that these are in fact recorded human encounters with real spirit beings.
*That is too extreme a proposition for most Atheists to give any credence.*
Why?
Because to entertain that possibility challenges their entire world view!
It breaches their fundamental tenets… No Ghosts allowed!
This is why I’m presenting this recorded phenomena here today to expose how our preconceptions limit our ability to think objectively about the world about us.
Ghosts may indeed exist! Yet if you have a mental block against that possibility… no amount of evidence will convince you otherwise. You are impervious to it all.
Every account of people claiming to have seen Ghosts you must write off as delusional… without any evidence! That is your default setting.
Let me introduce a second very commonly recorded phenomena…. Entity Attack syndrome…
Millions of people throughout history have experienced being attacked in bed at night by malevolent spirit beings.
I was once an atheist teenager who experienced this myself… it was terrifying… I have recorded my experience here… yet when I talked with people about it I was told “Oh that’s when you wake up at night but your body is still asleep’.
‘Scientists’ have even given it a secular name ‘Sleep paralysis’.
When I herd this explanation… being an atheist… I accepted it because it seemed to me that ‘Science had investigated this and knew what it was…. besides… It can’t have been a real spirit attack… because spirits don’t exist!
Relieved by this knowledge… Science has an explanation… I went on with my life. (though I never forgot the experience! Too Freaky!)
Several years later…. after (much to my own surprise) I had become a Christian I contemplated my experiences (x2) and realised just how easily fooled I was into thinking that Entity attack was *not a real spiritual experience, but some sort of psychological delusion.
When I thought about the experience itself… and having put aside my Atheist spectacles I realised that by far the most compelling explanation was that what I experienced was real… esp when you read the many many accounts of others who have experienced it too.
It is then that you realise the so-called ‘scientific explanation’ was a load of bollocks!
Not science at all… just atheist presuppositions dressed up as ‘science’… ie the Blinders that keep fools believing there are no Spirits, No Ghosts, Not Miracles…. and no God.
In truth recorded history is cram packed with accounts of spiritual experiences!
The greatest of these being the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
That really happened, yet you can’t see any of these facts if you have your atheist blinders on.
You will swallow any ‘rationalist drivel’… any so-called ‘secularisation of events’… rather than believe supernatural or spiritual realities exist and happen and have been recorded in history proper.
What is patently obvious to me now is how hollow and vacuous and absurd 99% of the Atheist rationalizations are about Reality!
They profess to know everything when in fact they know nothing.
They are lost and confounded by their own follies.
With this in mind please now read the Wikipedia excerpt I have posted below.
Make up your own minds about it… yet just remember there are two perspectives presented below.
1. is the so-called scientists and psychologists who have deemed these experiences to be nothing more that a ‘ psychological coping mechanism’
and 2. The perspective of the people who experienced the phenomena themselves… and are convinced they encountered benevolent spirit beings that helped them in their hour of need.
When I read their accounts… I fall into Camp 2 because I think it’s absurd to think Adults invent ‘imaginary friends’ and that these delusions know what to do… which direction they should take, etc etc. IMO those are definitive traits of an entity who knows the way.
Tim Wikiriwhi
Christian Libertarian.
Please read the Wiki Excerpt below…
Third man factor
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The third man factor or third man syndrome refers to the reported situations where an unseen presence, such as a spirit, provides comfort or support during traumatic experiences.
History
Sir Ernest Shackleton, in his 1919 book South, described his belief that an incorporeal companion joined him and his men during the final leg of his 1914–1917 Antarctic expedition, which became stranded in pack ice for more than two years and endured immense hardships in the attempt to reach safety. Shackleton wrote, “during that long and racking march of thirty-six hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia, it seemed to me often that we were four, not three.”[1] His admission resulted in other survivors of extreme hardship coming forward and sharing similar experiences.
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
— But who is that on the other side of you?
T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land Wikisource has information on “The Waste Land”
Lines 359 through 365 of T. S. Eliot’s 1922 modernist poem The Waste Land were inspired by Shackleton’s experience, as stated by the author in the notes included with the work. It is the reference to “the third” in this poem that has given this phenomenon its name (when it could occur to even a single person in danger).
In recent years, well-known adventurers like climber Reinhold Messner and polar explorers Peter Hillary and Ann Bancroft have reported experiencing the phenomenon. One study of cases involving adventurers reported that the largest group involved climbers, with solo sailors and shipwreck survivors being the second most common group, followed by polar explorers.[2] A similar experience was documented by mountain climber Joe Simpson in his 1988 book Touching the Void, which recounts his near-death experience in the Peruvian Andes. Simpson describes “a voice” which encouraged him and directed him as he crawled back to base camp after suffering a horrible leg injury high on Siula Grande and falling off a cliff and into a crevasse. Some journalists have related this to the concept of a guardian angel or imaginary friend.
Scientific explanations consider the phenomenon a coping mechanism or an example of bicameral mentality.
[3] The concept was popularized by a 2009 book by John G. Geiger, The Third Man Factor, which documents scores of examples.
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More from Tim…
My Testimony… Death of an Atheist. Follow the evidence.
Faith, Science, and Reason. The Pomposity of Atheism.
The Rock of Divine Revelation.
Space Truckin: Dead for 45 minutes.
The Walls are closing in on Atheism… not Theism.
Pasteur’s Law, Creation Science vs Nose Bone Atheism.
The Ludicrous Claims of Evolution! Why not ESP?
Science goes Ga Ga! The Spirit Temple-Material Interface. The Human Brain.